Thursday, May 19, 2011

Botanical Gardens

One beautiful day I had a crazy idea to take the kids somewhere awesome...all by myself.  I wasn't really digging the zoo so I thought I would give the Missouri Botanical gardens a try.  Gerry and I had gone there one other time when Naomi was only 2 weeks old and I thought it was pretty cool. So I loaded up the car, packed a cooler for drinks and snacks, lathered up the sunscreen on all of us and off we went. 

About 10 minutesinto the drive, I realized I'd completely forgotten the cooler-which contained juice boxes, string cheese, a soda for me, some water and the girl's sippy cups.  Darn it...not only was I going to have to pay for lunch, but now I had to buy drinks as well.  Oh well...I wasn't turning back so we just had to deal with it.

Once we arrived and were in the actual park I realized how lucky we were to have such a beautiful place 30 minutes from our house. I can't believe this was only my second time visiting in all my 32 years.  This place is amazing...and I almost like it better than the zoo.  I told Gerry we really need to go there more often.  The park is filled with beautiful flowers, bushes, trees and plants of every kind.  It has wide open spaces with amazing landscapes, beautiful, thick green grass, colorful displays of floating glass on the pond, waterfalls, play houses for kids carved from a tree...truly breathtaking.

Unfortunately, I just missed tulip season.  Some of them were still hanging on, but a lot of storms had hit the week before we were there so they were withering.  We walked around for along time.  It wasn't too crowded with people so Maria and Naomi were able run around without me worrying they would get lost.  We eventually made it over the Children's Garden, which was really cool....but definitely a two person job when you have 2 mobile kids.  I can't wait to go when it's warmer and they have the sprinklers running for the kids to play in. 

We wound up eating lunch outside at a little cafe in the park.  We even toured an old historical home owned by Charles Shaw.  The kids thought this was really cool to walk through and see the old time furniture, piano, kitchens and staircases.  Kind of creepy...but fun. 

Although the kids ran around like crazy, I really enjoyed my day with my two daughters.  They were both very well behaved, which made it a lot more fun.  I am really enjoying taking them out with me, now that they are older.  When Maria was 2, she would just run away from us...everywhere we went.  Naomi's not like that, so it's been a lot of fun going places with them lately.

Here are some pics from our awesome day!





















Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Easter 2011

(Yes I am awarethat this post is a little late.  See my previous post for an explanation.)


We had a great Easter this year!  The kids were excited about everything that surrounded the holiday and Maria was very aware that we weren't just celebrating bunnies, eggs and candy.  She has several books about Jesus and the story of his life, death and ressurection.  She talked about it at church with the other kids, as well as with us, and boy did this topic stir up more questions! I have no doubt in my mind that we will be turning to our church to help us answer some of her questions in the future...because the answers are so hard to explain to a 3 year old.  Anyway...she understood that we were celebrating and she was also very happy that she got to wear a dress!

Saturday morning we went to Karen and John's house for brunch...that was delicious! Unfortunately it was raining and pretty cold so we had an Easter egg hunt inside. The kids got some cute baskets and goodies from their aunts, uncles and grandparents and ate lots of candy!








Saturday evening, my family came over for dinner. We ate around 6, then the kids opened more baskets and we dyed Easter eggs together. We all had so much fun laughing and joking around. Maria loved having her older cousin Hailey there to help. Maria and Naomi both did great with the egg dye, however Naomi preferred to just put stickers on the plastic eggs...which was fine with me!












On Sunday morning, the kids opened their baskets from the Easter Bunny himself.  We had a nice breakfast together as a family and then went to church.  Later we went to my grandma's house to see her and my dad.  We ate lunch there and the kids got to spend some quality time with their great-grandma.  (The weekend was so much fun, even though I spent the following 2 weeks picking Easter grass out of the carpet.)



Bad Mommy Blogger!

I have been a terrible blogger lately.  Not sure if it's burn out, an overwhelming sense of being "behind" on events to blog about, or the fact that every time I try to sit down and upload photos, edit them and actually type out a blog that is coherent, my kids are beating the heck out of each other.  I'm sure it's a combination of those three, so anyway, I decided to just post some things that happened a while ago. I figured since this is mostly for memories and for us to look back on, I'd want to remember these things.  I know people are totally over Easter, but I've got some really cute pics from that weekend.  I am so ashamed to even admit that I haven't put a thing up about Naomi's 2nd birthday, which was May 8th.  And there are a few other fun things that have taken place in the past few weeks.

Also, I did want to mention another reason why I haven't been blogging: my husband bought me some amazing slideshow making software for my birthday.  So for Naomi's party I presented a 15 minute slideshow of her life...and I worked on that thing for weeks. 

So, stay tuned! I am going to try and whip out some posts that are long overdue in the next few days!

Thanks for reading! 

Friday, May 6, 2011

Funny girl

Maria: "I am thirsty.  Can I have a drink, please?"
Me: (joking because I don't feel like getting up at the moment) "Umm, sorry.  We don't have drinks here."
Maria:" Okay, well then can I just color?"

Huh?

Thursday, May 5, 2011

My Favorite Things


Today is my birthday! (Okay, so it was yesterday -- I didn't have enough time to get this post out...) I am 32 years old and I'm feeling pretty darn good about it.  In honor of my day, I thought I would share some of my most favorite things of all times. (In no particular order.) I have seen some other people do this on their blogs, so it's not my original idea, but I liked it.



Pedicures!

Wine...any kind!



Massages!

Love my Kindle...one of the best inventions ever!

Love sushi!


Love sea doo-ing! Wish I could do it more!

Wish I could ride horses more, too!






Tulips

Chocolate...any kind!



Everything from here is awesome!

I'm really not a huge beer drinker but I love a cold one of these on a warm day!

The only bath products, lotions, sunscreen and bug spray we use on our kids!

If I gotta wear SPF clothes, might as well have some style too!

Love this perfume!

So that's just a tiny list of some of my favorite things.  Of course, my favorite 3 people are Gerry, Maria and Naomi and they helped make my birthday super special yesterday.  The girls made me beautiful cards, Gerry had tulips sent to the house, brought home dinner so I didn't have to cook and even brought me an ice cream cake!  After we put the girls to bed, we finished the evening off by watching Seabiscuit, a movie I've been wanting to see ever since I finished reading the book.  Kind of low key, but awesome!

A great end to a great birthday! 




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