Labor Day Weekend in Manhattan

 For our 3rd year in a row, we've traveled to Manhattan for our Labor Day weekend festivities. Throughout most of our married life, we visited a zoo on Labor Day weekend with Joy & Scott's family (for 19 consecutive years). The we had a couple of years at Bull Shoals, and now it seems our new tradition is a Manhattan weekend with our K-State boys. Saturday was the home-opener for K-State football and we debated whether or not to get tickets. It was going to be VERY hot, and we just weren't

 sure it would be worth it. But then we lucked out when Grandma Cheryl's bestie had tickets she had won at an auction and didn't need (they have their own season tickets). As an big added bonus, we also got a parking pass! Thank you, thank you, Kathy!!

Friday night was the first Wellsville home game and the annual FCA Parking Lot Picnic, so we waited to leave for our weekend until Saturday.  With temperatures projected in the triple digits and Violet's checkered past on these weekends (and the fact that she flat-out told us she wanted to stay with Grandma Cheryl), we knew this wouldn't be a great trip for her. Oliver had an alumni lunch at Farm House, so we started our Manhattan weekend in Moore Hall, where Calvin gave us the grand tour. On his actual move-in day we only saw the elevator and his room. And Evelyn had never seen any of it.

We went down the dark hall on floor six until we found the door with Calvin's name (and a beetle??) on it.

His roommate was sleeping, so we just peeked in his room and then checked out Micah's room next door. Then Calvin showed us the rec room downstairs with the pool tables, ping-pong, foosball, etc.  It was pretty nice!  After this we went to Matt's house to get the tour.  We left his house and continued our Manhattan tour by seeing all of the progress at the Newhouse's place they are renovating.  It looks WAY different than when we were there in July! And it had AC going strong, which was a very nice surprise.  This place is going to be super-cute when its done. Maybe one or both of my boys will end up living here?

We had worked up an appetite by this time and were lucky to find a table at Kite's, a restaurant in Aggieville.

After our late lunch, we touched base with Oliver and he was done with his Alumni BBQ, so we headed to our final tour-stop of the day, Farm House. Matt and Evelyn had never seen it, so Oliver gave us all a tour.

Room 19: There's our boy!

Their room was very neat and tidy. Oliver has no decorations and very little other personal belongings. I guess he'll avoid ever getting cluttered here!

I appreciate their "room rules" -- Keeping his eyes on Christ and glorifying Him is my prayer for Oliver, too!

Kick-off for the game was 6:00 p.m., but we had a tailgate to get to! Lytles and Newhouses graciously invited us to join them, so it was a great time with Wellsville friends.

We had met up with Ty briefly in Aggieville and then found him again at the tailgate.

We were in for a treat when the band and spirit squad performed several songs right next to our tailgate! We found out later that the folks across from us had hired them for their grandson's birthday.  It was super fun!

One of the drinks we had was a spin on the Arnold Palmer. It was a Linkon Cure.  So crazy.

I love all of these boys! I love that there's such a great group from Wellsville in Manhattan. (Even though Mason doesn't actually go to K-State. And we are missing Jake and Carter in this picture.)

Here's the "hot moms club" picture (ok, so more like the "sweaty moms club" -- we were really hot at this point in the 102 degree weather).

Time to go into The Bill! This is the 4th time I've been to Manhattan on a game weekend, but the first time I've actually been inside the stadium. I'm so glad Evelyn and I were able to experience this!

The student section definitely filled up WAY before the rest of the seats. I can't imagine how hot they were in the direct sunshine and packed in so tight. We were still really hot in our shady seats.

The band's pre-game was great!

Nicholls State was proving to be a pretty pathetic opponent so we decided to head back to our Airbnb at halftime. We watched the end of our game there and spied Carter on the TV next to Willie!

Speaking of Willie and the sad state of defense for Nichols State, K-State scored 71 points in this game, which is the most points scored since 2000.  Willie does a push up for every point scored, with each score.  Which means that he did 394 pushups during the game! In a mascot uniform. In triple-digit heat. (And I read that 242 of those pushups came after KSU hit the 50-point mark, so within 37 minutes!) Lucky he didn't overheat and end up in the hospital. 

Sunday morning we picked up the boys for church at St. Luke's. I was excited to see Matt coming through the doors before the service started. All of my boys together in church makes this momma heart so happy! After church we got lunch at Baan Thai. Russ and I missed our annual Thai anniversary dinner (since we were camping in Washington at the time), so we were feeling overdue.

It was yummy and my kids are goofy.

We went back to our Airbnb to gather ideas for how to spend the rest of our day together. I was hoping for another zoo trip (because it's Labor Day weekend, ya know). We put ideas in a basket and surprisingly, no one else voted for the zoo on a hot Sunday afternoon.  Oh well. As long as we're together, I'm happy. What we ultimately decided on is as follows. . . First, a visit to the purple combine.  Farm House owns this combine and Oliver actually got to help paint it in preparation for the first home football game.

He gave us the grand tour and proudly showed us his contributions to this unique piece of farm equipment.

I mean, have you ever seen a combine with an upstairs patio, basketball goal, and two smokers??  It is ALL K-State, for sure.

I think it's so fun that Oliver is getting these experiences already.

The next agenda item was hitting up the AMC to watch "Cars", which was just re-released in celebration of its 20th anniversary. This was always my boys' favorite movie (and mine, to be honest), but we'd never seen it in the theater. Until now.

The seats were awesome and the movie gave me the same warm-fuzzy feeling it first delivered on Calvin's 3rd birthday movie night in 2008.

After the movie (once Russ found his keys), we went to Aldi to get dinner supplies and then took a short drive to Tuttle Creek to watch the sunset over the water. We ended up parking by the Marina (that we didn't even know existed). Look at that gorgeous sunset!

We took a little self-guided tour of the Wildcat Marina and it was cute! Even had a kiddie pool next to the Tiki shack. It was pretty desolate on this Sunday evening, but very peaceful.

Here are just a few more pretty pics of that sunset God blessed us with.

The last agenda item for the day was "play games" so while dinner was in the oven we pulled out a game at our Airbnb called "Spontuneous", one I'd never heard of.

This game ended up being really fun for our song-loving family. I'm not even sure who actually won, but we were all laughing pretty hard throughout, so I'd say we were all winners.

What an absolutely wonderful weekend spent with (most of) our family in Manhattan! Honestly, the only negative to the whole weekend was when we had to come home without our boys :(  I'm so thankful that I got several hugs to fill my cup. And once again, I'm so thankful that they are together. Now I can start counting down the days until I get to see them again . . .