Monday, June 21, 2010

How the Foley's do Father's Day. (in pictures, of course!)

It's been a very busy weekend here, at the Foley house.  As I posted yesterday, it was my birthday; Today, we celebrated Father's day.  (Roy's 20th, and Nick's first.)    Knowing how much Roy and Nick enjoy fishing and just hanging out at the local lakes, we decided to get both of them their Kansas fishing license for Father's day. 
We had originally planned to spend the day at the lake as a family, but today was one of those really hot and humid Kansas days.  Also, Jake had gone camping with his girl friend, Chrissy's  family and wasn't due back until later this afternoon.  Instead, we all spent our morning sleeping late, and generally, being lazy. 


Around 4PM, after Jake had come home and showered, Roy decided that it was cool enough to load up in the minivan and make a trip to  one of K.C.'s bigger and older cemeteries so that I could get some practice with my new camera.  While my husband and kids are used to these morbid little adventures, Jenn has a slight aversion to hanging out with dead people. So while we were gone, Nick and Jenn decided to take Baby Brooklyn to get supplies and prepare for our evening cook out/ fishing trip at the Lake.

We went to Forest Hills Cemetery in Kansas City, MO.  It's an huge,  beautiful, old cemetery in an older, mostly run down area of town.

This is the Abbey at Forest Hills.  It is absolutely HUGE.  This photo only shows about 1/3 of it.
Below, are some of the ornate headstones, family plot markers, and statuary.









There were also many, many mausoleums that are just breath-taking in design.  (I'll post those photos on my "Screams from the basement" blog because I'll be using them as inspiration to design a mausoleum with a flying crank ghost for my home haunt.)

But the coolest part of the whole afternoon was when we found an abandoned public mausoleum in the oldest part of the cemetery.  It had been built into a hill and had apparently become flooded or damaged at some point.  The old brass doors had been removed and replaced with a roll up door so that the coffins could be relocated.  It was still obvious that the outside of the mausoleum had been lovely.  As I started to photograph it the kids began to investigate.

Before I could snap the first picture, they discovered that the roll up door was, either intentionally, or accidentally,  left unlocked.  Of course, not knowing what might be inside, they had to peek.  As soon as they started to roll the door open, they felt an un-natural ICY cold blast of air.  They got so excited, I thought they would pee themselves!  As we walked inside it became obvious that all the coffins and bodies had been removed.   Still, it was very creepy.
 

It was a very cool, but also very creepy adventure.  Jenn would probably have NOT enjoyed it, but the kids and I were very impressed.

We got back home around 6:45 PM, and Nick and Jenn had almost everything ready to go.
They had steaks marinating and all the side dishes and dessert almost done. We loaded up and headed to the lake.  It was still sticky but not as hot.  Almost everyone had gone home for the day and we pretty much had the run of the place.  Nick, Jenn and the kids did some fishing - didn't catch anything :( .  We got the food laid out while Roy cooked the steaks.











We stayed until the park closed.

All in all, it was a lovely day and a great weekend !

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