Vaile Mansion - Independence, MO

Shortly before Christmas, Sigrid and I visited the Vaile Mansion in Independence, MO. The house, a Second Empire style of architecture, has been restored and is open to the public for tours. The home was built about 1880 and was owned by Harvey Vaile, a Kansas City Star mail route operator.

Every year, the mansion is turned over to interior designers to decorate for Christmas. I don't remember if it is a competition or just for fun, but the home is decorated out the wazoo. It has more Christmas trees inside than a Boy Scout tree lot has outside. If you don't get in the Christmas spirit after visiting this house, then you are beyond help. It is a beautiful home.

The house is a bit of a nightmare to photograph due to very dim lighting only made worse by the Christmas lighting. The chandeliers and lamps all seem to have been placed to make photos difficult. Add people touring the home that I didn't want to capture in the photos and it makes for a challenging morning.

This is the entrance.

Every room has a fireplace that was decorated.

Independence Table Tennis Tournament

If you are interested in seeing photos taken at the Table Tennis Tournament that I ran on April 17th, you can find them on the club's blog site at http://jacomottclub.blogspot.com/

It took about four solid days of work spread out over a month to plan the tournament and get people to sign-up. The actual tournament ran from 9:00 am to 4:00 pm on Saturday, April 17th.

We had 36 people play in the events which was down a little from previous tournaments. I don't think I will do another one in April......people have too many things going as the weather gets better. I have always held the spring tournament in March in past years. I had four no-shows the day of the tournament and 12 who cancelled within two days of the tournament. I had to do a lot of scrambling to keep the player count up so that everyone got to play enough matches.

In the end, everyone had nothing but good comments so I am happy.