Silly Faces & Cooking

The St. Louis Adventure

Last weekend, we took friend from Greg's work and his kids to St. Louis with us. Three adults, a nine-year-old, two five-year-olds, and a two-year-old. An adventure! We started around dinnertime on Thursday night. Travis, being the "big kid" of the trip, let the younger kids use his shoulders as a pillow.

Benjamin and Darryl were pretty excited about the trip. Piggy was pretty happy as well!

Saturday morning, we went to Bread Co. and then to the Arch.

A passing woman offered to take our photo together. :)

Jacob and Chloe held hands for a good portion of the weekend. She's five days older than Jake. They were pretty stinkin' cute together.

Crammed together in the pod going up the Arch. Randomly, we were sitting with a guy from our state!

Greg and Jake looking out the Arch windows.

It's such a beautiful city!

Jacob looks cool in photos.

Hugging Jake on the pod ride down.

The Museum of Westward Expansion.

Immediately after the Arch, we went to the Anheuser Busch Brewery for a tour. Fun! Are we awful people for bringing the kids? Jacob was in a bad mood for the most the tour because he heard he wasn't getting samples at the end. He didn't think it was fair. He didn't buy our arguments that none of the kids got to drink beer and that it was illegal and we didn't want to go to jail.

Listening to the cheesy tour guide explain how the beer is made. Greg paying close attention, Darryl being easily distracted, Jacob focused but also crabby about the lack of samples, and Chloe being sweet and posing with her crush.

Ah.... the 11 ounce samples. You get two, but someone (no names here) ended up getting three because someone (again, no names) doesn't like beer (except for the occasional delicious porter at one restaurant).

My beautiful boy.

My wonderful momma and the best grandma in the world... no offense to any other grandmothers reading this. :)

Posing in the pool.

Baby B and his hat. I'm so glad he loves it!

Papa and Benny.

It's strange how they look alike here.

At the Family Picnic at the Botanical Gardens.

The very nice guy at the sno cone stand gave Benjamin extra syrup for some reason.

I'm guessing he doesn't have kids.

The syrup was all over the seat of his stroller approximately 13 seconds later.

We went to the zoo bright and early on Saturday morning and spent most of the day there.

Sunday morning we had breakfast courtesy of the grocery store's freezer section (fancy, huh?).

Breakfast conversation turned into talking about when my dad cut my bangs and made them really short. My mom went downstairs and brought up a photo album as proof. Somehow that led to getting out the old family photo (pre-Anne and Ben) and then the resulting reenactment...

As we loaded up the car, Uncle Ben started a game of hockey with five kids.

It was an exhausting weekend! My parents are the best hosts around. I think we left Darryl and his kids with a pretty good impression of St. Louis. We had a lot of family time, a lot of acting like tourists, and a lot of laughing over silly times. I am deliberately leaving out the part about how a certain 5-year-old was Mr. Crabby Pants for a lot of the weekend. I am erasing that from my memory. It never happened. My children are both sweetness and light. Always. :)

And the little one below? He'd never cause trouble. Look at that face!

Bubbles in the Bath

Fireworks!

We went to a nearby fireworks show on Saturday and had a nice evening outside. Benjamin was sick for most of last week, running a fever of about 105 at times. The end result? A VERY crabby kid. He was done with the fever, but still prone to random meltdowns. We took the easy way out and let him have his pacifier. It made everyone happier. Really.