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Category: Midwest

The Black Hills 2022: Part 2

Posted on July 20, 2022July 21, 2022 by Lauren Lane

Over the week of the Fourth of July, my family and I packed up the car and headed to South Dakota to spend a week in the Black Hills visiting my parents. They have a cabin just outside of Deadwood. I look forward to going up there for a week every year. It’s cool, crisp, and the mountain air is perfection.

If you missed Part 1 of our trip, I blogged about it yesterday HERE!

Part 2 starts with a hike on the Mickelson Trail. Baby J absolutely LOVED this hike. In fact, even though we took the stroller, Harrison rode in the stroller most of the time and Jonathan walked!

The Black Hills 2022: Part 1

Posted on July 19, 2022July 21, 2022 by Lauren Lane

We got back last week from a trip to the Black Hills in South Dakota to visit my parents. For those that are new here, a bit of history on the Black Hills for my family, because this isn’t going to be a typical travel post about what we did and where we ate!

My parents grew up at the foot of the Black Hills in Rapid City, SD. My maternal grandparents bought some land in the Black Hills before my living memory, and lived in the Hills pretty my entire childhood. As kids, we’d always spend a week in the Hills visiting my grandparents. My sister and I have wonderful memories in the Hills growing up. We’d catch and release chipmunks, go camping, feed the deer, hike (I hated hiking growing up, though), and just generally lived outside in nature for a week.

Years ago, my parents bought land in the Hills as well, and in 2014 built a cabin on that land. They spend their summers living at the cabin, and the rest of the year they live in Kansas City. Thus began our own family annual pilgrimage to the Hills once a year.

Omaha!

Posted on June 15, 2022June 13, 2022 by Lauren Lane

A few weeks ago, we packed up the kids and took off for a quick roadtrip up the highway from Kansas City to Omaha for the weekend. It’s an easy drive for us, so the perfect change of scenery for a weekend away with the boys. We were only there for two nights, but we had so much fun getting to just focus on our family and the boys. As is so often at home, there are competing priorities and things that need to be done. It was so nice to put that to the side for a few days and focus on my favorite things in life: my boys.

Checking in to our rooms! This was Baby J’s first time in a hotel room, and there was lots to explore!

Let’s Look At…My Hometown

Posted on May 11, 2022May 10, 2022 by Lauren Lane

Harrison’s favorite song for the past year has been “More Than My Hometown” by Morgan Wallen, and whenever I look at this prompt, I think of that. It makes me smile.

I love this link up. A fun little prompt sharing a little part of our lives. As usual, the link-up is hosted by two of my favorite blogs (Shay @ Mix and Match Mama and Erika @ A Little Bit of Everything). Before we get to this month’s prompt…a look back at what we’ve looked at this year:

In February, I shared what we ate in a week.
For March, I shared a look back at college life.
Last month, we looked at how we plan date night

Today, I’m sharing a bit about my hometown. My hometown is just a few miles farther south than where we currently live. I grew up in a Kansas City suburb called Overland Park. That would be the very technical answer for my hometown, but quite frankly, there isn’t much difference between my hometown and the city where we currently live and are raising our kids, Prairie Village. And they are all just suburbs in the same general area of Kansas City.

Kansas City, while the city proper that most people associate with KC, is in Missouri, the Kansas City metropolitan area actually straddles the state line between Missouri and Kansas.

I loved having grown up in Kansas City, and now raising my own kids in KC. Having lived now in several other cities, I’ve realized that I’m truly a midwestern girl at heart. The people are kind and helpful, for a mid-size city there’s a lot of fun things to do, and it continues to grow, and it’s hard to picture ever loving another place to live more than this one!

SPORTS: Kansas City is home to many professional sports teams. Most popular are the Kansas City Chiefs and the Kansas City Royals. I have many fond memories growing up and over the years going to many games.

My 3 Favorite KC BBQ Restaurants

Posted on April 1, 2022March 30, 2022 by Lauren Lane

Kansas City is known for BBQ. It’s arguably in the same league for BBQ as places like Texas and Memphis in the discussions of top BBQ in the country. Having grown up in KC and eating KC style BBQ my whole life, I certainly have a preference for it’s style. All of that being said, if you come to KC, BBQ must be on your list of must try things while you’re here.

Today, I’m sharing my top three bbq restaurants in KC!

The Black Hills 2021 – Part 2

Posted on September 15, 2021September 14, 2021 by Lauren Lane

I shared our Part 1 of our Black Hills trip yesterday, and today I’m wrapping up the latter half of our trip.

We decided to keep our activity the next day pretty low key. We headed to a playground in Spearfish that ended up being amazing for all of the kids. It was great for running around and playing hide and seek, and there was a place along the stream that the kids could dip their toes in the freezing cold water.

How baby J felt about the cold water…

The Black Hills 2021 – Part 1

Posted on September 14, 2021September 13, 2021 by Lauren Lane

If you’ve been coming around here for awhile, you know that the Black Hills in South Dakota is a special place for my family. I grew up going to the Black Hills to visit my grandparents as a kid. It’s on the very western side of South Dakota, and in 2014, my parents built a cabin in the Hills with the intention of living in South Dakota during the summer months.

We’ve gone to visit every summer since 2015, except for last year with COVID. It’s always a lot of fun, but it was particularly exciting this year to see Harrison really enjoy the Hills. The freedom to be out in nature, explore, play and thrive was a joy.

Our trip began with a verrrry long car ride. We got up and were in the car by 5:30am for our drive to the Hills. Harrison was so excited to go visit Mimi and Papa that he didn’t go back to sleep like we were hoping for the drive. 😳 But he ended up doing so well. Baby J too!

Kansas City Tourist: Kid Friendly Activities

Posted on August 10, 2021August 9, 2021 by Lauren Lane

A few weeks back, a reader asked me for suggestions about where to eat in Kansas City when they came to visit, and it got me thinking that I wished I had a post to refer them back to with all of my favorite “touristy” activities in Kansas City. I’ve lived in Kansas City almost my whole life. There was a brief seven years when I moved to Michigan for college, and then North Carolina for grad school, but for the most part, KC has been home.

I’m going to break this down into parts, and today, I’m going to talk my favorite kid friendly activities in KC!

Being a mom to a toddler and a baby right now, there are some activities that just don’t work for them quite yet because they’re too young to appreciate it, so I’m denoting with an asterisk next to the activities that are really more appropriate for older kids only.

Indoor Activities

Wonderscope :: An entire “museum” for kids. There’s pretend play set-ups, building stations, water play activities. It is a kids’ dream place to play and learn!

The Black Hills – Part 2

Posted on September 16, 2019September 15, 2019 by Lauren Lane

We spent a week over Labor Day up in the Black Hills at my parents’ cabin. The Black Hills are near to my heart – they have always been my family’s “place.” My grandparents lived in South Dakota my entire life, so Kendra and I spent at least one week every year back up in the Hills visiting grandparents.

Last week, I blogged Part 1 of our trip to the Hills this year. So, today I’m sharing even more pictures from the latter half of our trip.

The Black Hills 2019 – Part 1

Posted on September 10, 2019September 9, 2019 by Lauren Lane

The Black Hills in South Dakota are my home away from home. A piece of my heart belongs to those Hills. My parents are from Rapid City, SD, which is the city at the base of the Black Hills. They moved to Kansas City before Kendra, my sister, or I were born for better career opportunities, but both of my sets of grandparents still lived in South Dakota. My mom’s parents built a cabin in the Hills when I was super young, so we went back to visit our grandparents and stay in the Hills at least once a year over the course of my whole life.