Dallas Aquarium

This was a great destination. One of the things that STL does not have is an aquarium, so this was on our must do list! Manatees, sea horses and so many other creatures we don't normally see.

The Poule at the Joule...

We spent one night in Downtown Dallas at the Joule, a very swanky hotel. Really just looking for a reason to use the word swanky, and this is as swanky as we get! Due to the holiday, it was very slow downtown and the hotel was very quiet. It was good for us, because I am guessing the usual clientele would not find our kids as adorable as we do. The rooftop pool, the "Poule", was amazing and by far our favorite spot. Blue and orange is a great color scheme, so I took a bunch of silly pictures. The pool also extended over the edge of the building by 8 feet in plexiglass. So if you swam to the end, you could look over and see the street, 10 stories below. I am way too afraid of heights to do that, but Matt and the kids loved it! The most exciting part of the morning swim: H swam the entire length of the pool and back with no lifejacket/floaties,etc...She is now a swimmer. A quiet Tuesday morning with coffee on a beautiful rooftop pool, and my little girl had her first independent swim. A perfect morning worth every penny of that expensive hotel!

Road Trip 2011 Texas

Our first stop in Texas was the Father-In-Law's. The kids had an amazing time at the pool at the Country Club. They practiced swimming, went down the slide, and fearless little E jumped off the diving board. On July 4th, there was a DJ that mixed George Strait and Blake Shelton with Katy Perry and P!nk. Momma was in heaven! I forget how great Texas is, they play George all the time! As it should be. :)
Another wonderful Katy, my mother-in-law, fed the kids snacks, did art projects and sent them home with chalk pastels. The kids had an amazing time at Papa Mark and Katy's.

Road Trip 2011 - Oklahoma

We drove from Lebanon to Oklahoma City for the first part of our road trip. We made a stop at the National Cowboy Museum in OKC. It was a beautiful museum, with a special part for kids to run around and be kids. We also spent the night with friends from college, that had kids our kids' age. They had a blast together eating, playing with turtles, snails and snakes and swimming till 9. It was a blessing to catch up. We very much appreciated their hospitality!

City Museum

We have been so busy packing, moving small things, cleaning, painting, cleaning and feeding E (no exaggeration). I don't even want to blog about it. So tired. But, we had friends from Lebanon come up this week for a trip to the zoo and the City Museum. Lots of fun! Here are a couple of pictures of H and E. They love to get their faces painted at the City Museum, the lady is a sweetheart. H chose a purple kitty cat and E was a tiger. He made it about 3 minutes before he smudged it (go figure). I love his picture, even smudged.

Busy Bees

When I am really tired, I drool in my sleep. It is pretty gross. We have been THAT TIRED all week. Having so much fun, but it is so busy. H started Magic House Camp this week and she did amazing. She tends to be nervous and hesitant, shy about being left and I wanted her to have a new experience before kindergarten. She was very used to her preschool and had the same teacher for 2 years, and we have Kindergarten starting in August. But, she did AMAZING! Really excited about going, no tears or nervousness, and she wasn't even jealous that E was going to get to do some fun things with me. And camp has been wonderful, she has done so many fun activities and they have been very organized. E and I have been spending an hour or two at the MH each day playing and we have also had Red Mango frozen yogurt, played at the Craft Caboose and had coffee with a friend at Kaldi's.

The kids also had a great midweek sleepover with Grandma while Matt and I went to dinner for our anniversary. Prime 1000, yummy steaks, great people watching downtown and great service. We had complimentary champagne and a dessert, so we really didn't spend much and had an awesome dinner. Our waiter asked how many months/years we were celebrating, and we told him "6 years." He acted like that was a real accomplishment. I am not for sure what that says about the clientele? :) Either way, it was lovely. Grass-fed steaks and they had a flourless chocolate torte, so I was in allergy free heaven!

In other big news, we get the keys to our Kirkwood house today. Plan on moving next month, which means I have a lot of work to do around here. Looking forward to posting pics of the new place, soon.

What a week.

I'm sure that I feel like most everyone this week, just thankful to be alive and healthy. The footage from Joplin is overwhelming and heartbreaking. I am so glad I have a basement! To borrow from my favorite podcast to listen to (NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour)"here is what is making me happy this week:"

The kids are home with me for the summer. In order not to drive each other crazy, we have created at-home preschool. We have some theme weeks planned out and some field trips. Luckily, I am a book hoarder and I have at least one if not multiple books to go with our various themes, and we are looking forward to our trips to the library. We also have a 500 Books of Summer goal and are working on a big poster to fill in with stickers. It sounds like a lot, but I know we can do it. The kids love to read and we are turning off the TV this summer, trying to limit 1 cartoon or movie per day.

This week has been Tree week. We have been outside playing Explorer Extrodinaire (Fancy Nancy book) doing bark rubbings and taking notes on our clip board. We found some fun stuff including hundreds of cicadas which are so loud in the woods behind our house. Good stuff. We have learned about bark and leaves and all the animals that take up residence in trees from the backyard to the rainforest. The kids are so smart, they soak this stuff right up. On Thursday, we are meeting friends at the Botanical Gardens where they are having an Extreme Treehouse exhibit. The treehouses vary in design and materials and the kids can play in them. There is also a Great St. Louis Tree Hunt going on where you can use GPS to locate 15 of 30 different trees in the area, fill out a journal, and turn in to get a prize. We are really excited about this. Our whole little nerd family. :)

We took Debbie, Matt's processor of 4 years, her baby blanket to a small baby shower at work. I included a picture. She is a wonderful mom of 4 (almost) and we are excited to meet her new little guy. Anybody who can work with Matt that closely for 4 years and still like him is a special person. Debbie is so devoted and does an amazing job. My life is easier because she handles things so well. Matt is spoiled!

Also including some pictures of the kids playing in the backyard and Yadi-Grandma's dog. The playset looks terrible because Matt killed all the weeds this weekend, so don't mind that it looks like the kids are in the desert. We actually have a very lush, green yard, just not in that one spot.