"Tisavor, Tisavor!" "Oh, a visitor. Well, she'll need a dress..."

My sister came to visit. We had a great visit. I had a ton of fun, and Heather is so great. She helped me buy furniture! Now I am the proud owner of a dining room table. I had to call a friend to pick it up in her Ford Explorer. The sales lady just laughed at me when I drove my Honda Civic to the store's loading dock.

Heather and I attached the legs, put the chairs together, and had pancakes as the inaugural meal. I had a friend over for lunch yesterday, and we had the second inaugural meal. I guess that means it's not inaugural anymore.

I also bought a couch and two chairs. They are awesome. But they won't be delivered until September. So when my friend walked in, her first question was "So, when are you going to get furniture?" (I have some camp chairs set up in the living room).

In addition to buying furniture, Heather and I went and did fun things in Kansas City. This town is full of cool stuff! It's too bad that we (we as a general human population) never go exploring in our own cities until someone from out of town comes.

Warning: The rest of this post is a travelogue. I like to write down what we did so I remember better. It's not really funny or exciting. But if you will come visit me, I'll take you to see cool things too.

We went to Starlight Theater, an outdoor theater that runs shows and concerts in the summer, and saw Legally Blonde (the musical). I will admit, I was a little unsure about this (yeah, and I'm the one who suggested it). The previous week was unbearably hot, 110 heat index for like 6 days. But when we went it was beautiful weather, clear and cool and no humidity. And the show was great. It was really funny, the music was well done and sing-able. They did a really good job.

Then we went to Union Station. It is the old train station that made Kansas City a thriving metropolis. Now it has shops, museum exhibits, and amtrak trains. We saw a really cool exhibit about the Chronicles of Narnia. It was interactive, and they connected a lot of the information from the movies to educational information about the world today. We also went to an exhibit about the history of the railroads and Union Station. That was really interesting as well.

On Friday, our plans got rained out, so we went shopping. It was great.

Saturday, we went to Powell Gardens. It is a huge garden with many different informative things. It was gorgeous. They have a new exhibit that is all food, and they let you try some. The lady fed us cucumbers, zucchini, tomatoes, and blueberries. She had an heirloom tomato that was just bliss. Melt in your mouth slice of heaven. So good. The flowers were pretty too.

On the radio I heard about a jazz concert that was being held for free on Sunday afternoon. So we took a drive north to the ritzy part of town, and listened to the military jazz band. It was great. Again a really pleasant evening, and it was fun to listen to all the good jazz songs. And then we walked around the super ritzy neighborhood for a minute. Heather grabbed a flyer from one of the houses that was for sale, and said, "Oh that's not even close to being as expensive as I thought! It's affordable!" For $739,000. Cheap housing out here in the Midwest.

We wound up with more time than we realizes on Monday, so we started to go to a restored train depot that a friend had mentioned to me. But I didn't see the sign and drove right past it, and then decided that I wanted to show Heather an old estate where I saw a friend get married. Well, I was just going to look around, but it turns out that they do tours of the inside of the home. So we decided to do that. It was really cool, they have done a lot of work fixing it up and restoring it.