St. Louis Adventures Part I

After Christmas, Alex and I spent several days in St. Louis, hanging out with family and exploring some of the fun the city has to offer. Alex is already planning his next trip back!

First up, a visit to the Arch.

Riding to the top in the evelvator pod.

Aunt Sue pointing out the sights.

630 feet high at the top!

We were there at a great time to get a picture of the Arch's shadow over the city.

We spent some time in the Lewis and Clark museum afterwards.

Making arches with Maria.

We had a fun lunch at Crown Candy.

We spent the afternoon at the City Museum. Alex wants to go back and spend a whole day there  it was super fun!

This is just part of the outdoor structure.

Climbing through this spiral tunnel up to the second floor.

More exploration.

At the top, waiting to go down the 10 story slide.

A slightly smaller slide.

Alex and Maria are up there somewhere.

Slides are everywhere at the museum.

Celebrating Christmas with Aunt Carol.

A creation with the Lego candies from Crown Candy.

Holiday Roundup Part III

We spent Christmas with part of my family and kept up with many of our traditions, including ravioli for Christmas dinner, lots of card games, and the youngest family member serving as the "present monkey," i.e. the present passer outer.

Cards with the cousins.

Merry Christmas!

Wrapping cape and a new Vikings shirt.

Driving the remote control truck under a Forrest bridge.

The cousins' table for Christmas dinner.

Holiday Roundup Part II

We got a new Christmas tree this year. Still small, but much larger than the table top one we had before. It was great to pull out the box of ornaments out of storage and decorate with Alex like I used to do with my Mom.

For some unknown reason, Alex decided to salute the finishing of the tree.

Playing with fake snow at after school with Ella and other friends.

His class's mittens for the Hands Around the World display in the school lobby. (Alex's is the purple one, fourth from the left.)

Alex was very excited to get antlers and a red nose from the Rudolph Ramble.

Asking Santa for the Lego Death Star.

The snowflake station at the YMCA.

The staffer running the snowflake table had some serious scissor-wielding skills, and she made initial snowflakes for the kids.

Decorating this year's gingerbread house.

Holiday Roundup Part I

In the spirit of catching up, I'm going to try to cover all the recent holidays and festivities in a few posts.

First up was the very rare occurrence of Hanukkah falling on Thanksgiving. We always start our Hanukkah celebrations at Thanksgiving because that's when we're together with Dave's family, but this year the calendar cooperated as well.

We had much to be thankful for this year, as the tornado that swept through central Illinois went right by Mindy and Shawn's house, but fortunately they did not sustain much damage and they are all safe.

This guard rail stuck in a tree is about 25 feet from their house.

It wouldn't be Hanukkah without a picture of the boys and the dinosaur menorah.

The lucky boy got some great presents.

Super excited about Phineas and Ferb!

Alex's First Tooth to Come Out

Alex has been quite anxious to lose a tooth. He's been trying to convince himself and us for months that he had a "wiggly tooth." So, on December 2 when I picked him up from school and he told me that he had a wiggly tooth, I did the obligatory check, and, lo and behold, it moved!

We've been tracking his progress, and it had gotten much looser this week, so I knew it was going to happen soon.

This morning, he and I were hanging out, and he calmly announced, "My tooth fell out." After all the anticipation, he was extremely stoic about it. You could tell he was excited, but he was playing it cool. He did, however, have a lot of questions about the Tooth Fairy and was especially concerned about what would happen if she ran out of money.

A Fun, Old-fashioned Fourth of July

We were fortunate to spend the Fourth of July at our friends' place in Michigan. We had a great time with lots of old-fashioned activities: decorated kids' bikes, a neighborhood parade, and fishing.

Wild Kratts and the Brookfield Zoo

Entering our time machine to go back to June, we first stop at the Brookfield Zoo where we had a great day. Alex likes the PBS show "Wild Kratts," and the Kratt Brothers had an appearance at the zoo so we went to see them. It was super crowded, but Alex enjoyed it. In addition to the show, we enjoyed the zoo and a really cool dinosaur exhibit with animatronic dinosaurs.

The Kratt brothers are coming up the aisle of people here.

Waving to them.

Having a great time watching the show with Dad.

Zoo fun.

My little archeologist! I would have loved this as a kid.

Controlling the dinosaur.

A good time was had by all.