This post is about the rest of our return trip to our house in St. Joseph, Missouri minus a side trip Cindy and I did to Hannibal, Missouri, which will be its own post.
MIDDLE OF JUNE
This post starts with us taking our adopted parents, Nancy and Denby (Scott’s real parents), to a taco dinner at Smooth Endings. They were in town watching Scott and Heather’s dogs while they were away on a family vacation.
My guess is this was their first time eating tacos in the back of the liquor store. Also, possibly their last, but they were great sports about it. We love going to Smooth Endings ourselves. If you are looking for a neat place to have a drink, or somewhere to buy some drinks to go, or even looking for cigars, Smooth Endings is the place to visit. And every Friday, Adrian’s Tacos is there serving up fresh and delicious tacos. Check it out for yourself using the link at the end of this post. Starting in 2025, St. Joseph has an arena football team, the St. Joseph Goats.
They play at the Civic Center in downtown. Of course we had to see a game. We saw them play the Iowa Woo. Our seats were just a few rows away from the field with a great view. Here are the goats warming up before the game.
There were tables and seats right next to the field. The out of bounds for the field is the wall where the table and seats are. It allows for a very close game experience.
Unfortunately, it was too close of an experience for one of the fans who was sitting at the wall and not paying attention. They ended up taking a helmet to the face at full speed.
If you are lucky enough to get seats by the field wall, pay attention. The game was really exciting. Arena football is a very fast paced high scoring game. Our game was tied 28-28 at half time.
With 26 seconds left in the game, the Goats were down 74-60. We thought the game was over.
But 10 seconds later, they scored a touchdown and were down by only 7 points with 16 seconds left in the game.
The Goats did an onside kick off, got the ball back, and scored one play later.
With four seconds left in the game, they missed the extra point and lost by one. It was a really exciting ending to a fun game. After the game both teams showed great sportsmanship by meeting at midfield for a prayer and camaraderie.
We will definitely see some more games next year. If you want to join us, use the link at the end of this post to get your tickets. Later in the month we had a lot of thunderstorms. Once again, Scott and Heather were the worse victims of the weather. They had lightning strike a large tree in their yard and do a number on it.
After the lightning drama, we all went to the Den for their monthly new drink tasting. We had bought Bobby some goat ears and horns to wear to the next Goat’s game. Here he is modeling them at the Den.
The tasting was up to the Den’s usual high standards. It started with the My-Jito which was a play on a Mojito. I really enjoyed.
Next up was the Sage of Innocence. Not my favorite, but others seemed to enjoy it.
The third drink was one of my favorites. Of course it had bourbon in it. It was named Vegas baby.
Next was a take on a dirty martini. It was called a Dirty Girl and was my second favorite drink of the night.
The last drink of the night had two of my least favorite flavors, basil and absinthe. It was called the Green Thai Affair and I gave mine away after a tiny sip.
As usual, the Den earned itself a link. You know where it is. While we were sipping away, it poured rain outside.
Luckily for us, it stopped raining right as we were leaving so we stayed dry on the way home. The month ended with Scott and I going to Kauffman Stadium to see the Royals play the defending World Series Champions (and also current back-to-back champions) Los Angeles Dodgers. The game was sold out and it looked like everyone showed up.
We had amazing seats several rows from right field.
The game started with the Dodgers’ first batter, Shohei Ohtani, hitting a home run to right field right in front of Scott and I. The Dodgers ultimately won the game, but the Royals kept it close.
JULY
July started with a golf trip to Mound City. After golf, we had lunch at Toad Hollar. They have a hilarious bathroom. Check it out.
We had plans to spend the fourth of July with Scott and Heather. To prepare for the evening, we stopped at Border War Fireworks. It is basically a giant warehouse filled with fireworks.
I loved how they had a “Kid’s Pack” of explosives.
On the night of the fourth, we hung with Scott and Heather and lit off all of our collective fireworks.
This took us to the part of the trip where we decided to sell our house that doesn’t have a basement and buy one that does. All along, we had been doing small home improvements, and we spent our last few days in Missouri finishing up all of our projects. Our plan was to return in October and list the house. We flew back to California and realized we should have talked to our realtor before deciding when the best time was to sell in Missouri. We made the call and learned our best shot at selling was over the summer because sales really slowed down in the fall and were even slower in the winter. Our little oversite caused us to hop back on a plane to Missouri, spent two frantic days preparing the house to be shown at open houses, then drive back to California in two days. That was a crazy five days. A future post will detail how the home sale went and where we ended up.
My next post will be about our trip to Hannibal, Missouri, Samuel Clemens hometown. Until then, feel free to visit a few open houses.
LINKS