Kansas City Fireworks

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Hello,

We've been on the road away from the RV for 5 weeks, so it's been hard to find time to write. Here's a review of our first three weeks in KC.

A Summer Wedding

We went back to KC for my brother Mark's wedding. He's been dating Cristie for 5 years and she already seemed like part of the family to me. She has a great disposition and knows how to have fun. She pulled off her signature move at the glow ball tournament by running around the green of the hole while a roman candle blasts into the air. Cristie grew up at the Lake of the Forest and knows everybody there. So the wedding was no small shindig. Everyone from the lake showed up as well as Mark's family and friends. From the first picture of the blog, you can see the grace and glow of Cristie. She was blissed out all night and was in the moment as much as anyone I've ever seen.

One special moment was captured in the video on this blog that was taken at the wedding. Cristie had babysat many of the lake rats (what they call children who grow up at the lake) and they gathered to pay tribute to her on her special day. They sang "All You Need is Love" by the Beatles and it was truly endearing with guitar solos and laser lights scanning the room. Everyone was there to wish Mark and Cristie the best in their new life together.

The wedding is a ritual to denote the union of two people into one. While a marriage is long lasting commitment and a legal agreement, the wedding is the celebration of the union and Mark and Cristie. From the candy table to the ice cream truck, every thing was done to perfection. I wish the best for Mark and Cristie and I know it's only going to get better for them.

Food with Family and Friends

We'd spent the week at my brother Chis's country home and we had a very nice stay. His wife Cheri is doing well since her back surgery and worked out with Grace multiple times. Grace and I cooked some cajun cuisine for them and I've posted a picture of his family at one of our dinners. Chris and I got to spend some quality time together constructing a photo booth for the wedding and we made an excellent booth for taking pictures of the wedding guests.

On Sunday morning after the wedding, we visited some friends of mine that have Sunday brunches once or twice a month. Seasi hosted the event and Kate, Pam, Hillary, Alan and Wally were all in great spirits. The panoramic picture at the top shows the breakfast feast and how most are in idle conversation. After a delicious breakfast that featured Grace's French toast, I lead the group in Laughter Yoga and everyone had a good laugh. It was the first time I lead a session and it went rather well.

On Sunday afternoon, we checked into Debbie's container home for the week. Debbie and Todd have been working on the house for a couple of years now and they almost have it finished. Debbie imported most of the designs from China and custom made most features of the house. The local news station had just finished the third segment on her home earlier in the month. The TV crews had come out video the early stages of the home, the middle stages and the finished product can be seen here:
http://www.kmbc.com/news/23860045/detail.html

The house was very interesting to stay in and the interiors was very spacious. Debbie has beautiful furniture, some very interesting interior designs and very colorful rooms. The main living room is my favorite and you can see Debbie and Todd lounging in the middle of the room in one of the pictures. The corrugated, light blue walls of the home give a nice rhythm to the rooms and the ceilings have interesting imprinted patterns that give the home a very modern feel. The home has more windows than any home I've been in and the whole house comes together well. I could see how much time she'd put into designing each room and making the house very livable.

You can see more pictures of her home in this article that was written in by the Kansas City Star. They came to take the photos while we were staying there: http://www.kansascity.com/2010/07/16/2081449/debbie-glassberg-who-lives-in.html

To top our stay off, she had family and friends over for a raw food dinner. Debbie had prepared the meal for days in advance and started us off with watermelon margaritas. Next was some dehydrated flaxseed crackers with goat cheese that were to die for. She followed this with squash flowers from her garden that are filled with cashew cheese - again, surprisingly tasty. Then she served avacado, cucumber gazpacho that was delicious. For the main course, she made home made tostadas with mixed greens from her garden and fennel salad. She finished us off with a 4-course desert plate. Any one of these dishes would have taken me several hours to make and Debbie spared no attention to detail. This was my second raw food dinner at Debbie's and I left with a full stomach and a pleased palate. Almost every ingredient in the meal was from her garden that she grows in the yard, on the decks and even on her roof. She lives the dream of urban gardening and it's a lot of hard work.

Fourth of July Explosions

The second reason for staying in Kansas City was to go back to my brother Chris's annual Fourth of July Blow Out party. I think that my family is so into fireworks because we were repressed as children on the 4th of July - or at least around the 4th of July. When we grew up in Overland Park, you could only have certain kinds of fireworks and no bottlerockets. We still didn't understand why they would outlaw these after our neighbors house burnt down on July 4th (at least it wasn't our rockets) when we were little kids. As repressed children, we just never got to blow enough fireworks off on the 4th before th police would come and take them away from us. We have an unmet desire that is insatiable as adults. Chris's home is a safe haven from such restrictions, so we get to blow up all kinds of things from China to celebrate our great nation's freedom.

Chris always sets the tone of the day with several acetylene bombs. Chris has an acetylene torch and was sure to have some full bottles to fill up various containers for explosion. We still worry about Chris's safety, but he has finally listened to us and stopped getting bigger and bigger things to fill up and explode. He climaxed a couple years ago with a 5' diameter, oversized beach ball. His usual container is a punch balls and he had several of those. His one creative bomb this year was a whale that you float in the pool. Because the whale walls were rather thick, several roman candle explosions bounced right off the whale before it finally exploded.

We had one new visitor this year and it was Jackson's friend Ali who is living with Dan and Brenda. Ali had never seen an acetylene bomb before and I captured some video of him shooting a roman candle at it with great aim. This kid definitely has potential and will be invited back. After he blew the bomb up, he made the classic mistake of forgetting that he still had a live roman candle in his hand. Check out the video that doesn't do justice to the earth rattling explosion of the acetylene bomb.

We've blown up barbie dolls and army men, but we're always looking for something new to blow up. This year, I bought a few stuffed animals and dolls to blow up at a garage sale for $0.50/doll. Stuffed animals worked really well because they burn easily and fireworks can blow their heads into little pieces. The doll that looks like a real baby was a smash! We burnt it with fountains, sparklers, smoke bombs and M-80s, but it kept together pretty well until it was decapitated. Once the head was removed, Mark stuck an M-80 inside the head and blew out the eyes and mouth. I have before and after pictures for you to compare.

The grand finale of the afternoon was Mark's Dog House. Mark and I will often dream about blowing things up and he'll call me in the dead of winter and imagine different things to blow up on a hot sunny day at the start of July. We'd destroyed my remote control jeep last year after several years of trying, so we were looking for new things to carnage. Mark decided to make a dog house out of cardboard and PVC pipes and had Audrey and Talia paint it. He attached missiles, spinners, whistling jupiters and several other things that you can see in the video.

The main trick of the dog house was that a trap door would open and the stuffed dog would stick his head out with an M-80 in his mouth. I didn't inspect Mark's handy work very well though and the dog never stuck his head out of the door, so we didn't get to see his head blown to smithereens. The main explosion in the video was the M-80. I also missed videoing the grand finale which was a brick of 1,000 or more firecrackers in the bottom of the dog house. After the string went off, smoke billowed out of the dog house and the poor dog died of asphyxiation.

Next year is going to be better than ever and we'll get the kinks worked out for some great pyrotechnics. Check out the video of the dog house and you can see the peanut gallery that always shows up on the Fourth to heckle the revelers.

Next time, I'll take you to Santa Barbara, San Diego, Baltimore and Philadelphia.

Cheers,
Scott

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Photos

Uruguay Flag
Carina and Eric pose in front of the Uruguay flag.