More from Kansas City

Hello Friends-
A midday report from the Klinkners in Kansas City! We are in the midst of a midday rest time after having spent the morning at the Hallmark Visitor’s Center. Kansas City is home to the Hallmark Company. They have a fascinating visitors center, which is also apart of a large mall and activity center called “The Crown Center”. The Visitors center chronicles how JC Hall came to Kansas City, from Nebraska with a small briefcase full of picture postcards and a vision to start a greeting card company. It shows how Hallmark became a internationally successful company and their leadership not only in greeting cards, but giftwrapping, media with the Hallmark Gold Hall of Fame Movies, toys and other merchandise. It also showed how Hallmark’s artwork and greeting cards reflected what was going on in national history and world history. Here is a picture of Wayne, Elaine and Dara in front of a metal mural just inside the visitor center:

In the visitor center they also showcased 17 christmas trees that were given to JC Hall by his employees. Each tree was symbolic and was pretty neat- reflecting some of the values of the Hallmark company and the founder, JC Hall himself.

Wayne looking at some of the Christmas Trees

Dara enjoyed the Hallmark Visitors Center- especially the parts where you watched a live demonstration of how foil embossing is done on the cards, and how giftwrap bows are made. You got to push a button at this machine and watch your very own souvenir bow being made:

After having lunch at the Crown Center we went to head back to the hotel. Dana was pretty tired because I kept her up all night snoring . Dara was begging to go swimming too. On the way home though- Wayne drove us through Mission Hills, a famous development on the Kansas City Missouri, Kansas City, Kansas border. This is an immaculate development of mansions and homes that just blow your mind. You can check it out online at: www.misssionhillsks.gov
Mission Hills is a pretty amazing place- and you just can’t imagine how beautiful these homes are. You have everything from huge English Tudor-style homes, to southern-style homes with large front porches and majestic columns, to stately colonial homes. We oohed and ahhed for a good half an hour looking through the development.

So far I have thoroughly enjoyed our stay here. There is something about the midwest and the south that is very charming. History isn’t so out of reach here. What I mean is- in Europe, there is so much history that its almost too hard to wrap your mind around. But here in America- history isn’t so far out of reach. You walk through the foothills of the Ozarks and you can envision some of the battles of the Civil War having taken place there just 140 years ago. You can see Westport (apart of Kansas City), the last port to the west and people rolling into Kansas City from the East coast, purchasing their covered wagons and moving all their earthly possessions into them for the trek to the West. There is definately a romance to the Midwest and the South- there is the trappings of American History that beckon to your soul and call you to chase and capture them for your own, even as you would a firefly at dusk. Don’t get me wrong- I love the Pacific Northwest, the ocean- but there is something very captivating about this area we are visiting. Its very cool.