30th Birthday!

For my 30th birthday, I am lucky that my hubby doesn't mind going with the flow :) A few months ago I called him because I heard Bon Jovi was coming to Kansas City. We saw him in Des Moines last year, and he is by far one of my favorite artists. He puts on an AMAZING show. So when I said I wanted to buy tickets, he didn't sound thrilled, but told me to go ahead. After the tickets were posted online I went to ticketmaster and searched for the best seats available. The ones in the "pit" (first 8 rows or so) were $1800 each!!! YIKES. Okay, search for next best. There were ones in the 4th row for around $100. WHAT! I booked them very quickly and have been so excited ever since!

Warning - this post contains a ridiculous amount of Bon Jovi pictures!

My mom came into town to watch the kids so we could make a weekend out of the event. We left on Sunday morning with the plan to just drive around and find a hotel. I had asked around to some friends and they recommended the Raphael. Coincidentally enough, Josh had been perusing the web that morning and stumbled upon the Raphael's website. So we typed it in the GPS and off we went. We made it there in about 3 hours, but we couldn't check in until 4pm. So we parked and walked around the plaza. Kansas City is known as the city of fountains, and the plaza was the first major outdoor shopping center in the country. It was also built in the 20s, when it used to be just a cornfields.

We checked in then headed to the melting pot. I think both Josh and I realized just how much we miss the big city. Lots of shopping, great restaurants, things to do...oh well, its only 3 hours away!

The next morning we got up late, had coffee and checked out. We drove downtown to the new power and light district. It looks as if all of downtown had a face lift. New store fronts, restaurants, shopping and bars. We had a great lunch at Bristols where fish is flown in daily. Then we were talking about going to a museum. Unfortunately almost everything is closed on Mondays. Luckily Josh had asked the concierge what was open on Mondays and he recommended going to the Arabia steamboat museum.

It was quite a surprise! What an amazing piece of history to stumble upon! 20 years ago some farmers located a steamboat buried in a cornfield just off of the Missouri River. It had been buried and totally preserved under the earth for 150 years!

--Reconstructed water wheel from the Arabia--

--the Arabia was fully loaded when it sank, over 200 tons of treasures on board--

--Arabia was considered the "wallmart" of 18th century merchandise--

--products from all over the world completely preserved--

--pickles, canned fruit, etc all still edible (not that I tried any - bleck!) --

--hundreds of thousands of beads from the middle east--

--this is what a tool shed looked like in the 1850s--

--every single metal item had to be tediously removed from the clay, scraped and preserved so that it wouldn't rust--

--hundreds of thousands of metal items from nails to hinges--

--josh on the "mock" deck of the Arabia--

--here is a map of where the Arabia was found--

Some of the coolest things we learned were around the preservation and deterioration process. When the teams started to remove the steamboat, they could have just left it in the air to dry. If they had done so the wood would have literally deflated into mush. Being submerged for so long had compromised the material it was made out of. Cotton literally disintegrated made from organic materials had disappeared. Luckily the team that dug it up immediately exposed the wet wood to preservatives. This filled in the holes that being unearthed had created and kept it fairly true to form.

Also-the Arabia had an abundance of brown, clay doorknobs which were very popular during this time. And it housed many leather goods. Similarly to wood, if the leather were left to dry in the air, it would shrivel into nothing. The historians have taken the boots, cleaned them with purified water, exposed them to preservatives, and finally placed in a high heat dryer. Their industrial strength dryer has been running non stop for the last 20 years! We had a blast learning all about this steamship!

The rest of the day was spent walking, shopping, going to a 5 star movie theater downtown to see Alice in Wonderland in 3d! The seats were plush leather with sub woofers in the seat - really cool!

--gas and light district was very cool and modern. This outside room touched all the bars with cool seating, fire pits and great places to socialize!--

After a tasty dinner, with horrible service, we walked over to the Sprint Center and got ready to get to our fantastic seats. Well weren't we surprised!

--this is the view we had, OH NO!!! Luckily the cameras moved throughout the concert, I was going to be so mad!--

--and then it begins, and the crowd goes wild--

--I could not believe how close we were!--

--the band was amazing, played over 2 hours--

--Bad Medicine, one of my favs--

--at one point the band started chanting "jukebox." so Richie starts playing "born to be wild" by steppenwolf and the band rocked the whole song!--

--At one point JBJ came out and was about 5 feet from me!--

--he sang Hallelujah, brought the house down!--

--strike a pose!--

--my new camera rocks!--

--singing just to me with Ricky rocking in the background--

--another closeup--

--then the WHOLE band came out to the stage right in front of us!--

--wardrobe change--

--the power and light district all lit up at night--

We snuck out at the second encore to make it to our car before the 15,000 that were at the concert got in our way :) We had to head home at midnight because we both had to work the next day...YUCK! What a PERFECT birthday weekend!!! I could not have asked for a better time :)