marine fun

Why wouldn’t you want to spend a Saturday in beautiful Marine? 

Well, the kids certainly enjoyed themselves.  We stopped by a little hot air balloon festival, which did not actually feature any hot air ballons, but where the highlight was this medevac helicopter.  Colin attempted to take off, while the (not so friendly actually) medic instructed him “don’t push any buttons”.  

But, I mean, what do you expect when you let a bunch of kids climb around in your helicopter like a jungle gym?

Charlotte was a little too thrilled at the thought of flying...

Then this random dude was giving rides in this plane behind his tractor...

again, my little daredevil was more excited about it than big brother...

 Then since we were already out there, we stopped by the apple farm Mommy grew up going to.  Surprise, they still have the same playhouse to climb in...

and freakishly large rabbits...

and friendly farm dogs and a fun tractor ride out to the orchard..

and all the delicious apples these two could eat :)

forest park balloon race

The forest park balloon race is one of my favorite things about St. Louis and I've been looking forward to September since we moved back last year!  Luckily the weather worked out absolutely perfectly and we had a beautiful afternoon and evening on Art Hill watching the balloons go by!

Colin was thrilled to run all over the hill, play frisbee, and do whatever it is he's doing here...

We had a lovely picnic dinner.

and laid back and relaxed to enjoy the day

even when there were no balloons, not a bad view

Oh and on our way out colin even got to climb to the top of the waterfall across from where we had our wedding reception, which was deemed the "coolest" part of the whole day :)

can't wait for next year! 

picnic party

We had the most beautiful September day yesterday.  After a bike ride and play time at the park, we weren't ready to head inside just yet.  So we headed over to SIUE to the gardens and had a lovely picnic.  What a great spot! 

Look how happy these two were!

And neither one could wait to go run down to the bridge to feed the (gigantic) turtles and fish the rest of their bread...

Happy little picknickers!

flower girl

Did you hear?  Aunt Zoe is getting married!

Charlotte has been practicing in case she gets called in from the bench for flower girl duties (I am actively trying to talk Zoe out of doing this).  Girl is a natural though :) 

"too much wildlife"

We knew that moving from a packed in subdivision (which was on old farmland and had its own fair share of wildlife, such as the time a coyote murdered a bird on our patio) to a house next to woods and a giant open field, would probably result in having more critters around.  Well.  Since we moved in a month ago, we have experienced the following:  Tons of deer wandering through the back yard, helping trim our trees (and tomatoes).  (In fact – yesterday at the tail end of our 10 mile bike ride two of them were happily munching along the side of the trail about 6 feet away from us as we stopped and watched, and didn’t care a bit about us.  Mike counted six on his run a day earlier).  We had a hummingbird stuck in our garage for the better part of a day.  Mice who got a little too bold in venturing out of the basement resulting in me seriously considering getting a cat.  A lizard who lives under our steps and suns himself on the patio.  A mutant giant squirrel the size of a cat who likes to chill on the front step of our porch.  And last night – an owl who chose 430 am to announce his presence by hooting for an hour and waking us all up.   To sum all of this up, Colin has announced:  “There is TOO MUCH WILDLIFE at this house!” 

First Day of Kindergarten!!!

I can't believe this day finally came.  The first day of Kindergarten!  Just look at this BIG BOY.

I feel like it was just yesterday I was sobbing in the parking lot leaving my little 3 month old baby at daycare for the first time.  Today he woke up approximately 3 1/2 hours before school started and couldn't wait to leave for school.

I took the whole day off so that I could take him to school and pick him up.  Because he's no longer 3 months old, but I am still crazy like that.

(this is about when he was getting tired of pictures and bright sun in his face and he made a break for it when we got inside). 

We had orientation last week so he knew exactly where to go.  

He went down the row of lockers until he saw his name.  He is SO excited to have a "big cubby" now.  He had to run into his room first to show his teacher his brand new big boy backpack.  

ARE YOU DONE TAKING PICTURES YET MOM. 

I walked him in and we found his desk.  He wanted to play with blocks and was more than ready for me to leave at this point.  I wasn't sure if he'd get clingy, but I'll take no tears shed on either of our parts! 

When I picked him up, he was all smiles.  He had a great day!  We had to go pick Charlotte up, so he went to tell his old teachers all about his first day of school and how much fun he had.  I'm so proud of him!

criterium fun

Saturday night we took the kids to the criterium in downtown Eville for some high-speed bike racing.  They were enthralled. 

Here is Colin cheering the racers on with his cowbell... 

Between races they also hold a kids race down Main Street.  It is the cutest trainwreck you could imagine. 

Here you see that despite the bodies falling around him, Colin keeps his game face on and pedals at what he later described as "wind speed" to get around the crowd.  

"Did I win?"

Charlotte also got a medal, despite not participating in the race.  Kids today.