St.Louis Botanical Gardens

While visiting my brother we decided to check out St.Louis' Botanical Garden.  It was amazing! Every square foot had to have cost a fortune. What I would give to just have one of their little sections as my own backyard retreat!  I could happily go at a nice slow pace & enjoy 3 days straight here :)

Here is the Japanese Garden area:

 The kids all really liked all of the fountains & water features.  I really liked this one as the giant ornaments made it feel like I was in some fairy whimsical land.

 I took this picture to remind me to plant lots of bright green, red, & orange hosta leaves in my future yard.

The kids all had fun in this maze since the hedges were tall enough you couldn't see over them.

We attempted to get some nice pictures by all the pretty lilies.

 I thought Becky & the girls' picture turned out really nice.

We are, of course, a circus.

Everywhere I looked it was a perfectly groomed paradise!

Tommy's favorite place was the children's garden.  Here he is pretending to be a pirate & saying "arg!"

He is obsessed with rickety bridges because of Thomas the train so he was tickled pink with this wobbly bridge.

He also was pretty proud he found some fake bats in the cave. 

I haven't done much with puppets before putting on a show with them & now every other day they have asked me to help them put on a puppet show. 

 It's funny kids are obsessed with pretend grocery shopping and when it comes to the real thing they suddenly can't stand it!

I decided: Who needs Hawaii?  I'll just come hang out in the green house here :) 

St. Louis Zoo

We go to our local tiny free zoo quite often so I wanted to make sure & show the kids what a real, nice big zoo was like so we did a quick trip to St. Louis' zoo.  Tommy loved the waterfalls.

Tommy was so nervous to pet this snake so he must have looked pretty real to him!  I like this picture because he looks like a little toddler & I'm not ready for him to become a kid yet.

Elephants

I love water tunnels. Every decent aquarium should have one!

Evie's Party

We made sure to visit Ben over Evie's birthday & that was definitely a highlight for the kids.  It's funny at such a young age they already get so excited about birthday parties.

Evie & Tommy

Tommy, Vic, Whitney, Evie right after blowing out the candles.

Tucker's first time swimming

Tommy was so excited to have a big slide to go down.  He can't wait to be taller & go down the "giant" slides.  He is such a dare devil & so anxious to grown "big".

Vic thought he was pretty funny sitting by this fountain with Tucker since it looked like Tucker was peeing.

I love lazy rivers & Vic only goes to be kind to me so I'm happy that Tommy now likes them so he can be my lazy river buddy :)

Baby on the way!

Who would have thought that one day I would be SOooOOoOoOO excited about this "baby"!  We have had the single & for 2 years now I've been drooling over the double... well, after a rough trip with not enough hands we decided to finally bite the bullet & now my next "baby" is on his way at this very moment.  Woot, woot!  I haven't been this excited about a purchase in a LONG time!  Seriously, I could sing from the rooftops right now! I am already in love.....  I think I'll name him BOB :)

P.S. If my title fooled you into thinking I was prego, sorry for the disappointment.  

This baby factory is permanently shut down! ;D

4th of July

Our 4th of July Firecrackers!

 I didn't want to sit home all day so I drove the kids by myself an hour away (down by Indianapolis) to see a parade.  It was really long with lots of people, just how every parade should be!

 Afterwards we had to walk quite a ways to get to the after party so I bribed the kids with snow cones.  We ate lunch by these pretty daisies.

 Then I let the kids play in the bounce houses for awhile.

 We got home & I rushed to the store to put on a quick BBQ as it didn't feel patriotic without one!

 The kids were pretty excited about having "a party!"

 We invited a few of the neighbors over for water balloons & back yard play.

 Our family, Miskins, & Newmans

 Tommy LOVED the fireworks this year.  He was running around like crazy super hyper & asking for more. Luckily, quite a few of our neighbors had quite large ones for us to watch.  Whitney hated them so we put her & Tucker to bed before we even started.

This was the first year in a long time that we stayed home & only did our own fireworks instead of heading down to the river.  I really liked it.  We still got a good show from ours & the neighbors & it was much more relaxing... and we had time to watch a movie together afterwards!

Picture Updates!

I needed 3 month pictures of my adorable baby boo & Whitney & Tommy were feeling pretty jealous so I got new pictures of all 3 kids!

For Tucker's 3 month pictures he is dressed in love:  His hat was made by his Aunt Becky, shirt from his Great Aunt Vicki, & blanket he is leaning on was made by his Grandma Sutherland :)

Whitney's 2 year pictures... all I have to say is 2 year olds do NOT know how to sit still or smile naturally so I feel pretty happy to get these!!! (I never did get any of Tommy)

 

Tommy at 3: I struggled for a long while with the other two to get their pictures.... Tommy on the other hand got all dressed up, took about 5 shots in 2 minutes & said he was all done.  Good thing he was very cooperative & has a naturally adorable smile!

 

June Update

June was packed full of family visits & working like crazy so I'm sad we don't have more pictures!

Below is our first complete family picture!  (Only took us 4 months to get us all sitting still together!)

 Tommy gave Vic matching ties. Aren't they all so cute?! :)

 I really wanted to show my mom Indian's beach on Lake Michigan so we went up north for a few days.  Here we are together at the top of a sand dune we hiked up. 

We have had a really cool summer over here so we didn't even get in the water because it was too windy.  The kids still had fun playing with their sand toys though.

I love the view of wooded forest next to beach. 

 I drove my mom to Ben's house & the only proof I have of it is pictures I swiped off my sister-in-law's blog!

Then we hurried back to greet Vic's parents.  They are always a lot of fun to host because they are the perfect house guests!  I took my camera both on a hike & the water park, but we were too busy having fun so I forgot to ever take any pictures while they were here :(  It was fun to have them here while Tommy gave a talk in church.  Tommy got to pick his favorite scriptural story & I was surprised when he picked "Lehi's liahona". He was pretty proud of the game we came up with to teach the kids how the liahona worked and he spoke up nice and loud for everyone to hear.  This time the kids were really into his talk & game so I could relax & enjoy it a bit more than last time! Inside that ball he is holding is a big arrow pointing to different colors that coordinated with the clues & if the kids gave naughty answers then they got lost in the wilderness, but if they remembered to pray when things got tough then God showed them the way to the promised land. It was fun to bring a scripture story to life & to help Tommy see that he can pray over so many more things than just dinner & sleeping at night :)

 And that was our entire June.  It sure flew!!!