Summer celebrations in St. Louis

We celebrated the 4th this year in St. Louis! Derek was able to get an extra day off so we opted to visit his brother and family for the holiday weekend. We had a super fun time and have some awesome pics to prove it! 

We enjoyed a parade in the morning in downtown St. Charles.

We traveled to the St. Louis fair -- first stop: air show!

Michael's had a fun trailer with crafts for the kiddos. The boys made a pop tab necklace.

And Belle made a crown! She said, "I look like Repunzel!!" :)

Belle and Uncle Brad

We set out our blankets and hung out by the arch!

 We ran into KC friends! Brian, a family friend, married Derek and I seven years ago and here he is loving our little girl! 

All of the cousins!

We enjoyed the fireworks that night and then we had an interesting journey home on the city metro, which proved to be a cultural experience at the least for our kiddos. As much as we think our kids don't listen at times, all of the kids did a GREAT job of listening when it was really, really important in the giant swarms of people!

We spent the rest of the weekend just hanging out and spending time with family! Uncle Brad cooked breakfast and read books to the kiddos.

The kids played in the pool

 And we did a few fireworks ourselves!

We ended the weekend with a trip to the arcade- the kids (and dads) had fun!! 

It was a wonderful little trip away. I'm glad I got to experience the fourth at the arch-- it was something I've been wanting to do for years!!! Spending time with Brad and Mary is always enjoyable and I'm glad to provide opportunities for the cousins to play together! 

Out and About

Sometimes I wish I was better at blogging individual things that we do so that I don't have super long posts, but.... I'm not, so here's a long post full of photos from our recent outings!

We visited Aunt Ashley a few Saturday ago. Go Mizzou!

Storytime at the library! In the past week, we went to a Toddler storytime for Belle's age group and then another for Jackson's age. Fortunately, both are fun for all the kids! 

We took the kiddos over to Bass Pro the other day. The place is so fun for kids to explore-- do you see the size of that catfish!?!? But then when the kids get bored of looking at the fish in about 4.5 minutes, I'm not irritated that I wasted $50 for our family to visit the actual aquarium. We were surprised to find a whole section of the store for Christmas kid activities, but I don't want to share those until after Thanksgiving.

This isn't an outing, but a special "in-ing". Jackson asked if we could picnic in the family room for lunch last Sunday so I cooked a fancy feast (frozen pizza with mac and cheese) and we dined in the family room!

And lastly, we've been enjoying this unbelievably wonderful fall weather as much as possible! 

Yesterday we traveled over to St. Louis to spend Thanksgiving with my brother-in-law and his family. We got in late last night, but already I've enjoyed baby Eli snuggles and Jackson is having a blast with his cousin, Gabe. Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Happy 4th

Our Fourth of July was jammed packed full of family, fun, and fireworks. In fact, i'm pooped so i'm gonna try out my mobile app for blogging! We'll see how it goes!

I can't caption each picture, do here's the rundown. We had an indoor picnic (with grandmas, grandpas, aunts, uncles) because it was a bazillion degrees outside. Afterwards, we went outside to shoot of some kid friendly fireworks. Jackson was a fan of the poppers, snakes, and sparklers, but so much anything else. In fact, many tears were shed our of sheer terror. (he "watched" part of the city fireworks underneath his blanket.) It only snapped one quick pic of me and Belle today... I spent my day trying to capture her cuteness instead. We ended the night at the Raymore city fireworks and they were wonderful! The lit up the sky for 25 minutes.

Our day was wonderful. We are so fortunate to live in this wonderful country and we are forever grateful for every sacrifice people have made of their time, family, and lives in order for us to enjoy living in the land of the free. Good bless America!

Now, here's hoping my kids sleep in an extra two hours to make up staying up past bed time! Ha, yeah right. :)

Mom’s have hobbies?

I’m still linking up with Jenna! I’ll be back to my regular posts soon! I know most of you read hoping for pictures of the kids, so I included some at the end!

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Tell us about your hobbies! What do you do in your free time? What are your favorite books, movies, music etc?
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Hobbies?? Free time?? What are those?? Haha. Just kidding. Somewhere beyond the yoga-pants, ponytail, and t-shirt with kid snot lies an actual person with hobbies, interests, and a life! :)  

And actually, I’ve found quite a bit of extra free time lately. Back during my crazy semester, we hired a babysitter to come on Thursday afternoons and I allocated that time to do all my school work for the week. My hubby has graciously offered to keep having her come over even when I don’t have school. Seriously, it’s amazing. Just four hours a week just makes me feel so human again! Awesome, right!?

My biggest “free time” opportunities are after the kids go to bed and my Thursday afternoons. Derek and I watch shows or movies together a night or two each week in the evenings. I love that time together. I blog sometimes and every once in awhile I’ll get him to play a game with me. I do like to be crafty and do some DIY projects from time to time! One of my favorite things to do on a Thursday afternoon is to find myself at Starbucks {for a smoothie because I do NOT like coffee} and completely veg out—after I run some kid-less errands of course! I’ll read a book, blogs, play a game on my tablet, text, or whatever.

I also find myself spending time reading/planning/working on things to do with the kids or around the house. Because the truth is… is that my favorite hobby is being a wife and mom, even if that sounds really cheesy. But I spent an hour at the library trying to figure out the Dewey decimal system in order to pick out a dinosaur book for Jackson and I like planning ahead for meals to provide healthy and yummy food! And I also find myself reading and doing research for my grad school stuff—not even for a grade {gasp!} but just because I enjoy it. Crazy, right!?

And because I haven’t even really addressed my hobbies yet, here they are {no particular order!}

• Movies—going to the theater is my favorite!
• Reading—my last book, Outlaw Platoon. GREAT BOOK! It’s a true story of a platoon in Afghanistan that takes place in 2006.
• Bargain shopping—garage sales, thrift stores, craigslist, Oh my!!
• Socializing—and my favorite activities include having people over for dinner and my once a month book club.
• Music—I enjoy live music and am trying to incorporate it more into my life!
• Blogging—it’d be silly not to include it, because, seriously. I spend a lot of time doing it! I enjoying writing and I love reading blogs!

So anyway, that was kind of a long post for a pretty short question. I also like to talk… and type! :)

Here are my latest Instagram pics!

We had a dinner time picnic last week!

Seriously, her blue eyes just make me melt!

“Hey, Mom! I’m jammin’!” {yes with my pot and pan lids}

We went to a local spray ground earlier this week! So much fun!

Aunt Ashley came to play yesterday!
 

And Jackson is becoming a pro at snapping green beans from Grandpa’s garden! I know this will make you proud, Grandma Trickel! :)

We love the park!

We have had some beautiful weather this week. Cool mornings, warm afternoons. And we have taken complete advantage of this wonderful play-outside weather by visiting the park four times in the past five days, a total of 8 hours in the sun. We picnic-ed one day and once again visited Deanna Rose another. Jackson and Chacey play so well together outdoors and I've even some studying in while they've played. Here are some pictures of the fun we've had:

Chacey enjoying her lunch in the shade of the tree on Monday.

 

Jackson got to feed the goats at Deanna Rose on Wednesday (of course, he tried wanted to taste it too-- yuck!!!)

They both loooove the swings!

Jackson even had fun on the big kid swings.

Running across the bridge on the big kid playground-- when did he get so big!?

Of course he loves the slides, a.k.a. "whee!" Check out that hair!

This weather is awesome. If it wanted to say this temperature all year 'round... I wouldn't complain!! Well, I know that's not going to happen, so we will just enjoy it for as long as we can!