Colorado and Kansas

We headed west for Thanksgiving stopping first in Colorado and then over to western Kansas. I got to meet my Colorado cousins in person for the first time. It's easy to see why Bodie says so many good things about them - they sure are fun. We ate an enormous Thanksgiving meal followed by a fun day of basketball, visits with Uncle Jim and Aunt Rosie, and an adventurous day at their super cool zoo.

The giraffe exhibit was incredible, you come (literally) face to face with dozens of giraffes. I would squish my face into the fence, dangling the lettuce out and grunting at each giraffe as they came near. When they gobbled up lettuce from my hand, I usually fell over or took off running - but then quickly returned for the next round of giraffe encounters. Check out the picture with the giraffe eating lettuce OFF OF Bodie's head! Simply awesome. They also have the most impressive variety of bears my parents say they have ever seen in a zoo including a HUGE grizzly who looked like he was getting really close to hibernation.

For those of you who follow this blog, Colorado Springs is where Bodie fell off of Dave's shoulders and fractured his skull three and a half years ago, http://piantanidafamily.blogspot.com/2011/04/colorado.html. While quite a while ago, my mom was a bit nervous about "returning to the scene of the crime," especially repeating a family basketball game. There Bodie is, shooting a basket - not on my dad's shoulders this time. Fortunately, we all remained intact and we had a wonderful time.

We then traveled east to my nana's family farm in western Kansas. She is the oldest of seven kids and they grew up in a small town called Scott City, Kansas. The family farm and ranch have remained in the family and my dad refers to it as a HUGE playground; I'd have to agree. Harvest season is over so we lucked out and got to play with our family - farmers work incredibly hard, so finding down time was a treat.
We stayed with our fun cousins in Garden City and packed in ten times more fun than we could have ever thought possible. My Uncle Luke has a rock star collection of cars and hosted a ton of cousins, aunts and uncles at his "shed" for a party for us. Uncle Luke and I have several of the same cars, the only difference is mine are about two inches in length and say Matel on the bottom. Oh, and it's not just a car shed, it's got tons of toys including a basketball hoop so I had some down time to practice my shot (I'm getting closer!).

Cousin Chris and Uncle Bob let us play with their "toys" and Uncle Bob took Bodie out to do donuts in the field in the ginormous tractor. My mom said she felt like a tiny petite flower next to this equipment - I guess that's a good thing. I felt like an ant, (yes, that tiny speck under the 120 foot sprayer in the picture on the right is ME!)

And I'm told no Kansas trip would be complete without something outrageous, so we checked out the World Record Holding Largest Hairball. Yep, I said hairball. Here's the proof. Surprisingly, this massive thing was actually bigger - it's lost some density over time. But in it's glory days, it was 55 pounds and 37 inches in circumference. Yikes. Of course we took a photo!

Thanks to all of our amazing family for such a memorable trip. Looking forward to doing it again!