Crystal Bridges, Our First Trip.

One of my favorite parts of living in Southwest Missouri is how quickly we can make a trip to another state. Kansas in barely a 10 minute drive, Oklahoma 20/30 and Arkansas about an hour.

On Saturday we loaded up and headed to Arkansas. Our first stop was taking Russ to an AWESOME bike trail park. Instead of sitting around waiting while he rode around, the girls and I made a donut trip to Krispy Kreme. This was their first trip to Krispy Kreme (Joplin does not have one) so it was pretty exciting to watch the donut machine and even more exciting to eat donuts!

After driving around *ahem, getting lost* we found our way back to dad, thank you GPS.
Next we headed to Crystal Bridges, an amazing art museum. Let me start by saying it was more beautiful than I had imagined it would be. I could have spent an entire day there. Any picture I post will in no way do the beauty justice.
Marissa called this the Frozen tree.

Ready to go in. Did I mention there is no admission fee to visit this place?!

"Look George Washington". 

She really liked this painting and insisted on a picture in front of it.

It was a lot of fun to talk to Marissa through the gallery. I would ask her about what caught her eye, what paintings she liked best, what her favorite part about them was.

I hope our girls learn to love and appreciate the beauty of all kinds of art. 

After some art viewing we found a play area for a much needed break.

Then we headed outside to explore.

If he looked any happier he would just burst, HA! When asked about his smile he replied "I was smirking." Sure babe.

Being tickled in the park.

This was an AWESOME family outing. I absolutely can not wait to go back for another visit soon. I think a trip in the fall and again in the spring might just be needed. Sure, visiting an art gallery with a couple of young kids definitely required us bringing our A game parenting wise. But I had nothing to be afraid of, they did great.

We packed up and headed home but not before we made a pit stop.

Yes Dunkin, we are happy together. You should come to Joplin so we can spend LOTS of time doing that.

Where have you went lately?