Skills USA Part One: I Got to Kansas City Last Monday

Peter and I got to the airport at 8:30--two hours before my flight was scheduled to leave, as per instructions.  It was a good thing we did.  The line was loonnng!  There were so many people going to Skills USA, most of whom were high school-ers, Peter, sweet hubby that he is, waited in line with me to get my bag checked in.  As we were getting my ticket and waiting in line, we saw a group of men dressed in Scottish clothing, carrying bag pipes and other instruments.  After I got through security, I saw them playing, likely warming up.
I got to my gate and met up with my "adviser", and we were eventually joined by the other student going from my school.  Then we settled in to wait.  As my adviser said, flying is a lot of hurry up and wait.  However, while we were waiting, I learned the reason for the Scottish bag pipe players.  One of the desk attendants announced over the intercom that there would be WWII military veterans flying today.  As they entered the terminal, the bag pipers led the way, playing "Scotland the Brave," and everyone in the area stood and applauded to honor our veterans.  It was pretty cool.

Our second flight was delayed quite a bit, so we got into Kansas City later than planned.  When we arrived, they did a little orientation thing and then we given our T-shirts, name tags, pins, and programs for the Skills USA Conference.  Then we were finally allowed to go up to our hotel rooms.

Driving into Kansas City (I had fun editing this photo in Google Plus)

Kansas River or Missouri River

National Skills USA Shirt

Utah Skills USA Shirt

I believe both shirts were designed by students, or at least members of Skills USA

I went up to my room, opened the door and found...someone else's belongings already spread throughout the room.  I closed the door and called the head of Skills USA from our school to confirm that he had gotten me a single room (he had), then I went to the room of the other student from my school to see if he had any problems with his room.  He didn't, but he allowed me to stow my stuff in his room while we both went down to find Whit, the director of Skills USA for Utah.  I explained the situation, we went upstairs to "headquarters" (the hotel room for Utah officials, I guess) and he learned that I had been given the wrong room key.  Apparently, I had originally been in the room I was given the key for, which was right near the rooms of the other two from my school, but then I had been moved.  So Whit took us down to the desk and got me a new key!  It was a lot easier to fix than I was afraid it was going to be.  I went up to my new room, and it was empty! Hooray!

Monkeying Around on Memorial Day

Memorial Day, Peter and I both had the day off, so we took a trip to the zoo!  It was nice to have a break from working to get out together and have fun.

Of course, I had to take a picture of the lions!

Cute little tail wrapped around the bars.

This little monkey kept swinging right up to the glass to hang right here.  Then we would go back and be twitty, pestering the other monkeys.  You could almost hear the other monkeys fussing at him, "Stop it, Jimmy.  Jimmy, if you don't stop that, I'm gonna take you out!"

I don't have any pictures, but we timed our stop by the seals and sea lions well.  We overheard that a show was about to start, so we waited a bit, and got to see them do some tricks!  

Selfies!  The easiest way to get pictures of both of us :)

Somebody saw us taking the selfie above, so they offered to take our picture! :)

We had to wait in line for a while, but we got to see a bird show!

We bought a magnet with this elephant on it :)

After the zoo, we went over to Peter's Aunt's house for a BBQ with some family.  There were hot dogs, burgers, watermelon, and cookies.  Unfortunately, their pool cover was broken so they couldn't get it open, so we couldn't swim.  However, Peter did play with some nephews and cousins in the hot tub while I sat out of the way, reading.  Oh, and taking videos of him with the kids, of course :P