Royals

So the Royals won the World Series this year.  The last time they won was 30 years ago, when Steve and I were five.  And now our kids are 6 and 4.  It was so neat to see the whole city come together during the playoffs.  And we definitely made some memories as a family watching the games each night...well, the girls only watched until bedtime, but Steve and I stayed up.  Two days after the win, the city celebrated with a parade and rally at Union Station.  Schools were canceled.  All buses were free that day.  It was a big deal.  Our plan was to skip the parade and just go to the rally.  Steve would go to work as usual and then walk to Union Station (about 2 miles) after lunch.  I would drive to a bus stop at 75th and then take a bus directly to Union Station.  But when I arrived at the bus stop, there was a line about a block long!  Buses were scheduled every 20 minutes, but we waited for almost 2 hours and never saw one.  You would think 2 hours of nothing would lead to some very cranky girls, but it was a nice day and they were happily playing in the dirt the whole time.  I told Hannah we should probably give up on our plan and just drive home to watch it on TV.  She said, "If you keep trying, a bus will come!  If you keep trying, you can do anything!"  I like when she uses my own words on me, although they didn't really apply to willing a bus to appear.  I said I'd wait for 20 more minutes.  By this time the hundreds people in front of us had given up (or taken taxis, ubers, etc.) and there were only 30-40 people left.  And then a miracle.  A bus!  And everyone in front of us got on...and we were the first ones left in line.  And then a minute later...another bus!  We made it.  I couldn't believe it.

But not quite.  There was so much traffic, the bus dropped us off about 8 blocks away.  Then we walked.  I had a text from Steve that he was on the steps of the Liberty Memorial, and we could see it!

We finally made it!  I lifted Olive up to see and she said "WOW.  I've never seen so many people before."  But we ccould't find Steve and I couldn't call or text him.  All the people in one spot crashed the network and no one could use their cell phone.

After walking back and forth for awhile, we gave up looking for Steve.  Hannah saw some steps off to the side and we decided to explore.  After walking down I realized that there was another level of steps and THESE were probably the ones he was talking about.  We did some more scanning of the crowd and we found him!!  His plaid shirt was easier to spot than a plain blue one. :)

Steve was in a great spot to see everything.  Even Hannah could see without being held up.  We later went down closer to Union Station to see if we could find the Chases.  We couldn't...but we did run into another friend and a former student of mine.  Our friend Debra took this picture.

After the rally we decided to walk the two miles back to Steve's office.  We stopped along the way for dinner and to check out some KC landmarks.

It was an epic day.  We left our house around 11:00 and didn't get back until about 6:00.  And the only time the girls complained was when Olive didn't get the seat she wanted on the bus.  They saw the day as a big adventure...and it was!  There were over 500,000 people at both the rally and parade.  It was supposedly the biggest crowd ever in the state of Missouri.  And when the girls see the picture of the sea of blue at Union Station, they can say they were there.  How awesome is it to be a part of history like that?  Here are more pictures/videos.

the drone footage is amazing

from PV Post