Kansas City

This weekend Kyle, Peyton and I took a trip to Kansas City to visit our 5th NFL stadium. The Chiefs were playing the San Diego Chargers. We're trying to pick a game each year where at least one of us cares about at least one of the teams playing. Kyle is an LT fan, so we decided to check out the Chargers. It was tough to find a game this year. We are so busy, with Terps games, Peyton's birthday, and Halloween.

Our plane to Kansas City left Friday at 3:20. Peyton fell asleep less than 10 minutes after the plane took off and slept for 2 hours. He was awake for about the last half-hour of the journey. We arrived in KC around 5:30 their time (which is 6:30 here). We picked up our rental car and set out to get some dinner. We were going to go to On the Border, but as we were driving I saw a sign for Cracker Barrel and begged Kyle to stop there instead. He is such a fabulous husband and agreed. (Well, really, he probably didn't want to listen to me whine for the rest of the night if I didn't get my way!) We feasted on lots of delicious food and then headed over to the hotel, which happened to be right across the street.

This time we stayed at an Embassy Suites, so that Peyton could be in a separate room than us. This worked out wonderfully as Peyton slept great! We got him to bed around 8:00 their time (9:00 our time) and he slept through the night until 8:00 am when the alarm woke us all up.

We got up early and went down to the lobby for free breakfast! This breakfast was even better than the one offered at the hotel we stayed at in Michigan, because they had a cook that made you omelets and pancakes however you wanted them. There was also the normal buffet selection of other breakfast foods.

After breakfast, we left for the stadium, which was about 30 minutes away from the hotel. We drove around their intricate parking lot system for a while before we found where we were supposed to park... which was a million miles away from the stadium! Here is a picture of the outside of the stadium from across the parking lot.

We got to the stadium around 10:00 so that we would have time to check it out before the 12:00 start time. There was NOTHING to see in the stadium though! It was just concrete upon concrete. There were no pictures, no decorations, nothing. That was kind of lame. The stadium was built in 1972 though, and was undergoing renovations this season (so they said).

Here is one picture from our seats. Even after the game started, the stadium was probably only 80% full. The video board says, "Welcome to Arrowhead Stadium - The Loudest Stadium in the NFL". It wasn't really that loud though, because the Chiefs suck pretty bad this year.

We only bought two tickets for the game, because kids under 3 do not need their own seat. Peyton stole the seat next to us before our neighbors arrived. He sat on our laps for the rest of the game.

Kyle wore his LT Chargers jersey, so he wasn't too popular with the home crowd. Oh well. The Chargers whooped up on the Chiefs, winning 37-7. Here's a family picture of us at the game.

I think I look good, but the boys don't. Haha. Stupid me forgot to charge the camera battery before we left home, so it died at half-time. This was the last picture that we were able to take. There wasn't even enough battery power to take two tries. Eh.

It was Military Appreciation Day at the game. There were two flyovers, one of 5 Black hawk helicopters and one of 4 planes. They did a tribute to soldiers from the KC area that lost their lives over in Iraq and Afghanistan and swore some new Army recruits in at half-time. It was nice.

We had to leave at the end of the 3rd quarter though because it was raining like crazy. Kyle and I didn't really care, but I felt bad for Peyton and didn't want him to get sick. It sucks that we went all the way to KC and then had to leave early, but Peyton's health was more important than the game. Peyton wasn't bothered by the rain though. We kept asking him if he wanted to leave and he always said no. He's a trooper. He fell asleep about 5 minutes after we put him in the stroller to head back to the car. We went back to the hotel to change into dry clothes and then we went to dinner. We tried to go to a BBQ place (we were in KC after all!) but got lost and ended up at On the Border, like we tried to go to the night before. So we never ate any barbecue. Oops.

We enjoyed another free breakfast Monday morning and headed to the airport around 11. Our flight left a little after 1:00 and we got back around 4:30 our time. Peyton slept the entire plane ride this time, so that was nice. We had a nice trip, but next time we'll stay an extra day to check out the city, because all we did on this trip was go to the game.