Science Center Day

This has been a very busy week. I haven't gotten through all of the pictures of things that we have done and we are getting ready to pack up and go again. We are almost done though. This was one of our favorite days. Babers first dinosaurs - up close and personal. Plus all the personal attention for our GranmaR!

Sand, Giraffee's & the Zoo

The Zoo is always fun, but we have the mind set of the Zoo being a partial day thing. I can remember as a kid my parents would pack things up when we left St. Charles to drive ALL THE WAY TO THE ZOO! Snacks, drinks, etc. We would spent hours there and wander from the stinky monkey house to the Gazelle exhibit where we would always be posed in front of the sign by my father. If he were doing it today that would most likely be the represented family picture in the Christmas card - hey, there's an idea for a Christmas card........hmmmmmm.......check your mail boxes in December. Anyway, due to our "quickie" mentality for the Zoo it is sometimes hard now to go and try to see everything. In fact, I heard our friends who were with us say several times "you can see that when we drive by everyday" or "we can see that next time". It was hard to push them around to see the things we can't see - heck it was hard to push ourselves around because we aren't used to spending that much time at the Zoo - so we let our friends go home and we kept doing the Zoo with Granma R. We had lunch there, we shopped at Build A Bear there, we saw the Bird House (it was so cold in there it was beautiful!), we even took the time to give info for a survey. We spent about 5 hours in total there. Long time compared to our old patterns, but well worth the effort (and by the end it was an effort). We avoided the stinky monkey house and the lizard house (those creep me out) - we didn't even see the elephants or hippo's (which we love) and still we filled up 5 hours!! Sheesh. Guess we will have to go back and do the South Side next time.

Six Flags Day

This is a small portion of our Six Flags pics. I really did decrease them.....

Spidey the Biker Boy

This is pretty exciting - Ben has started riding his bike. His own bike, not the trailer bike attached to my bike, HIS Spiderman Bike! It took me a day to get this into the blog, but it happened Sunday evening about 8pm. They were playing CandyLand and in my head it was decided that Spidey should learn to ride his bike. So they were called outside - SuperStar took off around the circle riding her own bike (although she came back and by the time Spidey was riding she was doing yard work - you can see her pulling weeds) and Spidey began the practice - although he already knew how to ride and immediately took to it. He quit riding after he got it though and began practicing starting, stopping and falling.



Yea Spidey!!!

Papa & Gramma Day

Is it possible to have a Monday on a Wednesday? Because we totally are here. The weather is gorgeous - so that is good - however, the rest of the day has been more wonkey then Willie's Chocolate Factory. Woke up early and energetic - kids were fine - then the TV broke - then the kids went nuts (not because of the TV, we have the big one still) - Babers climbed up as far as he could on the swing set, only I was half out the door with the heavy TV toward the curb (today is thankfully trash day) - Spidey kept complaining about clothes - my mom called to tell me stuff that I couldn't listen to because I was packing a picnic lunch - the cat tossed on the carpet - my music dealie wouldn't work for me - Babers was having meltdowns super early - we couldn't find our friends at the library even though we were all there..........deep breath......there is an upside - we had fun at the library - I bumped into an old friend (if you can say someone you have known for 1 year is an "old" friend) - we finally found the friends we intended to meet - I got rid of the TV in the living room and now we are back to only 1 TV (much easier to monitor the use of) - and I finally got this slide done.

This is the first day of our vaca - our day with Papa & Gramma.

Places We Lived and Loved

Well - what a whirl wind that was. We spent 5 days in STL and then forced a few friends to return home with us here (okay, we didn't really force them). In the end a little over a week of vacation fun has resulted in feeling like a few weeks. My guess is it is because of the two different locations. Another result of the time spent doing many things - STL Zoo, Science Center, Boat House, Art Museum, Six Flags, going to a new fav for various flavors of Gooey Butter Cake, Family Days, swimming at Aunt B's, Coffee House play dates, trip to see the Cheese Farm, swimming at the park here and working on GS Badges are many many pictures!!

We will start with these - simple, but there is so much organization of pics to be done and this is our first day "off" vacation - give me a few....

Places We Lived and Loved........


The middle flat in this building is our first apartment - although the landwoman called it a flat, apparently technically not an apartment. Marlo was great and she kept her buildings fabulous. We had more room (1,400 sqft) in this place then in our first house (900 sqft). This was our home for 1 year, just down from the Loop, walking distance from so much and biking distance from even more. We loved it.



This is the first house BigGuy and I owned. It was super cute and comfy, but it was always too small for him. Once I was pregnant he was ready to put it on the market. Can you imagine that we put our entire family in this house for a holiday!


Okay, it wasn't snowing this past weekend, but we also didn't do a drive by of our old house. Funny, we drove by the street and even on portions of the street when we went to church - just not down the street. So this is the best pic I have easily found of our second house - the one we lived in for 9 years and had all three kiddo's.




This is SuperStars first school. Dewey International Studies Elementary. Wonderful starting place. Huge school. This is why our current elementary seems so small.


Our parish. Beautiful church. We did actually attend, but the last thing I was thinking about was taking a picture. I was all super focused on spiritual things at the moment. Okay, or I was focused on keeping Babers out of the street. So this is the best SMS pic I have - a cake that I deco'd for Babers adoption/christening.

Summer Nights

We are headed on the road for a bit. No posts will be made. Fun will be had though. Please catch us in STL if that is where you are. In the meantime - enjoy the summer nights - like these two do.

Then There Were 4

We are going to start calling BigGuy "Hawk Eye". On Saturday we were hanging around in the back yard with Papa & Gramma J. BigGuy was smokin' some dinner and he noticed that one of the cows was acting kinda funny and had something odd hanging from her tushie. He called everyone out and we started to watch - crossed the road and looked kinda closer. Yep, there was an odd sack hanging out of her tush. She didn't seem upset though - kept eating grass. I called our friends down the way with cows, only MrM didn't know anything about birthing calves or horses. So we went back to watching. The cow did a Downward Dog yoga pose, laid on the ground for about 5 minutes and then stood up and started licking the ground. We were pretty sure it meant there was a baby there, but she was laying down 5 minutes at the most - is that long enough? It was. We kept vigil for about 10/15 minutes to watch the baby stand up. We saw its first attempts at standing, its success and its first steps toward the mom to nurse. It was way cool!! Good job Hawk Eye.

Next time we will know what is going on and can call neighbor kids over to watch. This is a neat spot to be living. Now there are 4 new baby Moo's.

Happy 6th of July!!

Not much time to make posts on the blog when there are back to back adventures to attend to. Add in a little everyday life and you have yourself a downhill slide of time loss. However, we had a very relaxing 4th and 5th of July! We started our holiday weekend on the 3rd though - weird, eh? Well, our neighborhood did their annual 4th of July Parade on the 3rd. The kids waited to the last minute to try to figure out what they were going to dress up as to enter the bike portion of the race. In the end I threatened to throw them into the back of the truck instead. This completely excited them and they abandoned the thoughts of their bikes, decorated the truck, invited some neighbors on board, jumped in to toss candy to the crowd (only one child was hit by candy - good jobs kids!!) and enjoyed the heck out of themselves. Following the parade we went to the M's for a potluck of delish dishes, playtime and fireworks. It was a fun time!

One Room Down

Although we still need to hang a few thins in SuperStar's room (mirror, horse posters, shelf, etc.) - pretty much this room is done. Don't ever expect to see it this clean again either, well, unless you give us notice you are coming over and then it will be clean when you originally arrive. SuperStar loves it and it is really is interesting how relaxed you begin to feel when surrounded by all these colors. I was surprised.

Guest Blogger - SuperStar

I gotta say GS camp was fun.Some things were bad and some things were good. My counslers were Drift wood,Hugs,Choo Choo,and critter. Critter and choo choo were my favorites.The tin-tins(bathrooms) were very smelly and the showers were tiny but in the end GS camp was awesome.I loved the beach and swimming but I missed my family alot(exept for the annoying spidey). The counslers were amazing.They were soooooooooooooooooooooooooooo nice Drift Wood was silly,Choo Choo was fun,and Hugs and critter acted as if they were 5 years old. We found a bunch of clay on the beach and in the water. I helped build two things, a paradise for ants and a mountain. The ant paradise needed clay for walls to protect the sand that was in the paradise and I needed clay to make the moutain. They both turned out perfect, but one day geese came up onto our beach area and ruined both things. They pooped everywhere on the beach. Luckily they don't poop in water. I had soooooooooooooooo much fun at GS camp.