Random Ramblings

~ I've been feeling crafty lately, I think it's the fall weather.  I have 4 projects that I'm wanting to complete.  I've halfway through one.  :)

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~ Amelia has been impressing my with her coloring skills over the past month or so.  But I was super impressed when she wrote this, in the car, by herself, only with me instructing her while I was driving. 

Dad

~ My goals for this weekend: make my Christmas buying/making list and meal plan for October.  Whew.  I'm heading to KC for Women of Faith and I'm not driving so I think this goal is very accomplishable.

~ Asher had his two year check-up last Tuesday.  No shots!  Woohoo!  He's perfectly healthy and actually moved up on the percentage scale for his weight.  He has ALWAYS been in the 30 percentile, but at his check-up he was 28.2 pounds pushing him up to 50%.  He's still super tall for his age, measuring 37 1/4 inches tall.  That means he can now ride all the rides that Amelia can ride at SDC.  His party post will be up soon too!!  Hopefully next week for sure.  :)

Big boy.

~ We are going to Disney in August 2014!  I put our deposit down last Friday.  So excited for this trip.  It's us, my Dad, Karla and Kate, and Brittney, Kenny and Eli.  We are going to have a blast.

~ Have a great weekend!!
 

Afternoon at the Nature Center

Sunday after we spend the afternoon at the nature center in Springfield.  Again it was a beautiful day so we wanted to take advantage of it by being outside so we decided to try it out.  Both kids enjoyed it a lot, more so Asher than Amelia, but he's a boy, so anything that involves dirt, rocks, sticks or being outside is right up his alley.  In fact he lagged behind the whole time because he was more interested in making holes with sticks and picking up rocks and looking at squirrels than walking.  Towards the end of our 'hike' both kids requested piggy back rides and I decided that I should earn double steps for that!

My cuties.

Cheese!

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She has a stick in the hands if you can't tell.

Look at Amelia's face!

Saturday FUNday

(written Saturday evening)
Today was such a fun day.  First of all it was a beautiful fall day, I mean beautiful, the weather was perfect, low 70's and lots of sunshine!!  A-MAZING! Second it was a much needed family day, just Nathan, the kids and me (after the parade).  I love days like this.  First up was watching the Applefest parade with mema, poppy and Aunt Shanny.  The kids loved it, and I think experiencing things with the kids makes it so much more fun for me as an adult.  Does that make sense? Anyway, Amelia told me her favorite part of the parade was the marching bands (future band nerd?) and Asher told us that his favorite part was the candy!

 

After exploring the Applefest we headed to a local pizza restaurant for lunch and home for naps/house cleaning fun. (I hope you can hear the sarcasm here). But after the kids woke up we headed to a local pumpkin farm for some more fun! Again, we had a blast.  I feel like I'm being super cheesy in this post, but it really was great day.  I'm feeling incredibly blessed tonight.   

Time Flies

~ I'm ALMOST caught up on blogging.  However I just realized I didn't post at all last week.  Ugh.  I'm in the mist of writing about our New York City trip and I'm currently uploading pictures from my camera so I can blog about a certain two year olds birthday party, which was a HIT!. :)   Now if I could only caught up and all other areas of my life.  :/

~ I just finished reading Divergent, the first book in the Divergent Trilogy by Veronica Roth.  I'm seriously loving it!  It's nice to read something different every now and then.  I know, reading when I should be doing other things, not a good way to get caught up. 

~ Is there such a thing as terrible 3.5's?  We are there.  Oh my.  I'm praying it's just a stage that will pass quickly.  I'm praying for patience and I'm praying that I'm slow to angry.  Whew, that's a lot of prayers happening.

~  I read somewhere yesterday that there were only 97 days until Christmas, is that even possible?  Makes me feel even more behind. I have zero ideas on what the kids are getting this year. However, Amelia has recently been asking about Sparkles, our Elf on the Shelf, so I'm looking forward to continuing that tradition and making new ones. 

~ Asher got another present from Mema and Papa this past weekend.  A battery powered tractor.  He LOVES it.  Only problem is he doesn't want to share with Amelia.  AT ALL.

 

 

~ I've been doing Jillian Michaels Yoga Meltdown on my off Zumba days or when I'm home with the kids and they are down for naps.  This week I ventured out and did level 2.  Yikes.  I could hardly walk the next day, however I did it again yesterday and I'm sore today, but not as sore.  Warning if you want to try it out, Jillian is pure evil.  No joke...

~ So super excited that I get a date night tonight!  We are going to dinner and to see The Wizard of Oz, my ALL TIME favorite movie, in IMAX 3D!  Got to love Mema and Papa!

Two Days...

In two days my 'baby' will be TWO YEARS old.  I'm still in a bit of denial.  Tomorrow will be spent running errands to prepare for his choo choo party on Sunday.  I serious can't wait to see his reaction.  I hope he loves it.  Asher brings so much joy to our lives.  He is no doubt a boy, he loves getting dirty, playing with rocks, wrestling, and everything loud!  I'll do a complete update on him after his two year check up.  But her are some cute pictures in the meantime.     

iPhone picture dump :)

Making S'mores.

Playing in the puddles.

She can color in the lines!

Selfies by Amelia.

Boy with a fever wanted his Mommy and his nap.

Amelia started gymnastic.

Snapping bean.

Look at that determination.

Water table turned pool?

Yes that's a lifejacket on his head.



New rockin' shoes.

St. Louis Family Vacation

Day 1 (written at the end of day 1)

I'd have to say day one of our first real family vacation as a family of four was successful. I'm laying in a hotel bed listening to the snores of three exhausted family members. :)  Today was a laid back no schedule day.  When we left home this morning our only real plan was to head to St. Louis.  We took our time and didn't get into town until 2:00 where we decided to stop at The Magic House.  It was AMAZING.  Excellent for our kids, everything was interactive, both kids loved it.  No stroller required here the kids got to sort of run free and check out of the exhibits.  Nathan remembers doing The Magic House when he was younger and apparently it was MUCH smaller, in 2009 the renovated and now there is the purple side that was 4 floors and the red side that has 3 floors.  We were there until 5:00 and if the kids were a tad bit older we could have stayed longer.  This place is a must for kids of any age really.

Why, yes, I did.  LOL

After The Magic House we went to our hotel and checked in and jumped on the bed for a bit before heading to the Galleria Mall for some delicious dinner at The Cheesecake Factory, complete with post dinner Build-A-Bears and some shopping at The Gap for this momma.  :) 

Meet Rainbow Bear.

Day 2

All four of us in a hotel room together mean when Asher wakes up at 6:00 am on 'vacation' we all wake up at 6:00 am.  :)  After a morning of cartoons and free hotel breakfast we headed to the St. Louis Zoo.  Free zoo on a Saturday = lots of people.  But we hung in there with the rest of them. Our biggest challenge was Asher wanted to literally ride every animal and would get mad then we moved on or told him he couldn't ride it.  He REALLY wanted to ride the Rhino.  "Rhino, ride it. Rhino ride it."  The penguins were a hit with both kids and as we were headed out of the zoo Asher fell asleep in the stroller.  Successful zoo trip.

 

 

 

 

 

 

We left the zoo and head to a restaurant that I had read about for lunch.  Fitz’s American Grill & Bottling Works, where they actually bottled their own soda.  We were able to sit very near where they were bottling root beer that day.  So the kids were entertained, and we got to have some amazing soda and floats that were made with FOUR scoops of ice cream.  Amazing I say.

It was raining a bit after lunch, our original plans were to head downtown and check out the Arch, but instead we detoured to another mall to kill some time while it was raining.  And honestly I didn't end up buying much we were just waiting the rain out.  After a quick check of the radar we decided to head downtown to the Arch.
It was just drizzling a bit when we finally made our way to the Arch, but wasn't horrible.  Amelia really wanted to go up to the top she said.  After talking to the lady at the ticket counter we found out it was a 45 minute wait.  Seems doable, unless you have two kids who have had small naps either in a car seat or stroller.  But Amelia was pretty insistence, so we went with it.  Things were GREAT until in was time for us to get in time to go up in the Arch. Asher then started crying over anything and everything, nothing was making him happy.  Everything we tried to do to distract him only made things worse.  We were THOSE people with THAT kid for about 30 minutes, until he FINALLY fell asleep, as the top of the arch.  None of this was his fault at all, totally all us trying to cram everything we could into one day.  Poor dude.  However Amelia enjoyed her trip to the top of the Arch.  We ended the evening with Pizza delivered to our hotel room.

 

 

 

Day 3

We headed to Grant's Farm after we checked out of the hotel.  The line to get in was crazy long.  Both kids enjoyed the "big horses" and riding the camel.  Asher was just super excited he finally got to ride something!  We actually weren't there all that long, but we still enjoyed ourselves.  Next time we'll get there earlier to avoid the crazy line at the beginning.  The kids crashed before we were even out of the parking lot headed home.  :) 

 

 

Our first official family vacation was a lot of fun, I can't wait for many more!