Trippin': Day 2

We spent the morning at the St. Louis City Museum before finishing off our drive to meet family. This museum is made entirely of slides and climb-y things: all of the things kids must dream of! It was an absolute exhausting blast, and like nothing I have ever seen before!



{The view from the parking lot. I spy with my eye a gutted airplane, a rope bridge, and a school bus hanging off the top of the building!}


{View from the rooftop. We rode a Ferris Wheel 11-stories off the ground! And that cage? The kids made the nearly 10-minute climb up that before going down the super fast cylinder slide immediately below it!}


{If a kid is given a choice to walk across water, then the choice is obvious!}


{Just my damsel heading out of this replica castle. I didn't ask her to pose.}


{Mason escaping from a "crashing" airplane. One of the hundreds of metal tubes we had to crawl through. This one is just 4 stories off the ground!}



{The airplane that we needed to abandon. Looks a little charred!}


{Camryn's favorite slide. This one started out tame but turned a very fast corner and sent you flying out over the parking lot!}



{Possibly the steepest slide I have ever seen!}


{More metal tubing to climb! I should have done some flexibility stretches before we went. This museum made us work hard!}

Not pictured: The not-skate skate park room where the kids had to run up and around ramps and then could slide back down.
The underground-and-completely-dark-if-not-for-the-black-light maze that Camryn took me through where each turn brought us to a more narrow and shorter space. Think army crawling sideways to get out! And now I have a fear of tight dark places...
Mason crying under a constructed tree somewhere after he got lost from the rest of the group. This place made it extremely difficult to keep an eye on everyone because different paths shot you out in completely opposite places. Leave it up to the kid with zero sense of direction to go missing!

The kids left this place tired! So we quickly pumped them full of lunch and hit the road for our 4-hour drive thinking that everyone would pass out hard. And some of them did. Except Mason who, to date, has questionably never napped a single minute of his life away. That kid!

Road Trippin'!

We hit the road for Missouri to celebrate Papa's birthday, but before driving to the part of Missouri that almost touches Arkansas, we stayed overnight in the part of Missouri that almost touches Illinois!
We stayed at the best hotel ever: the kind that has free breakfast, free dinner, free happy hour drinks, free fresh popped popcorn, free parking, and a pool. Best part of it all: Our room had a view of the Arch, which happened to be nearly across the street from the hotel!
So after having all the free food and all the free drinks, we dumped a load of cash to take a coffin-sized capsule to the top of the arch.


{This is the door we had to climb through to get in to our private ride. Not for the claustrophobic kind.}


{People taller than Camryn can't sit upright. Too bad for everyone but her!}


{This is how the 4-minute ride up made Mason and me feel.}


{Leave it up to Caleb to fart when we are all trapped in a ventless bubble. Rude!}



{Made it to the top! The kids enjoyed looking through all of the peep hole-sized windows. We even spotted our hotel from up above!}






{Back to Earth and ready to swim at the hotel!}

VBS: Vacation Bible School

We are not a religious family, but the boys have been asking a lot of deep questions lately so we jumped at the opportunity to send them to a week of bible camp with their friends.



I loved hearing the boys talk about all they learned. Among the lessons:
1. God is always with us even if we can't see him.
2. God loves all of us.

And perhaps my favorite carpool conversation that another Mom shared:
Kids are making slime at VBS today.
Jacob said, "What does slime have to do with God?"
Braden said, "It's his guts."
These heathens are funny! Let's schedule Bible study for next week. Father Mason will lead the group. I just hope there's communion.

Laughing at this, and wishing that I signed up for Thursday's carpool!

Mason loved the tunes they sang so much so that he shook me down for cash to purchase the music CD for the week. He's going to be a Holy roller. One song at a time!

They had a blast doing crafts, playing games, and singing songs and are already asking if they can go back next year!

We Bucket List so Hard

Our summer has been full of fun, and in so doing we have crossed off the majority of our bucket list items.





{Catching a movie outside. Lego Batman Movie. We sat through half the movie while the kids ate popcorn, captured lightning bugs, and sorta watched the show.}





{Going ice skating. Mason and I had fun on the ice while the other two sat in the warming room complaining of blisters. Wah.}





{Making homemade Popsicles. And the kids decided the Popsicles taste better when they melt. AKA back as the fruit juice they once were. Side note: Mason has a wad of tissue shoved up his nostril to block the teeny tiny bloody nose that he had about an hour before this picture was taken. Gotta be sure that blood clots.}





{Riding our bikes to McDonald's for ice cream. We picked up a friend on the way. No one complains about distance when ice cream is involved!}





{Visiting the school playground. It's hard to believe that in 31 days school will be starting back up. Not loving this. Yet.}



{Dancing in the rain. Love this!}



{Not on the list: Building contraptions with all of the stuff that Caleb tells the kids is off limits. Secret: Caleb's rules don't apply when Caleb isn't home. Here, the kids fashioned a "train" out of approximately 47 bungee cords. It was an epic fail but they enjoyed trying!}

Best. Summer. Ever!

The Fest

It's that time of the summer again!
This year the carneys threw caution to the wind and didn't bother to worry about height requirements, which made the rides all the more thrilling!



{The boys took this ride for a literal spin, and Mason ran to me when he got off and said, "That ride almost made me barf!" Gross. And noted.}


{This spinning ride was much tamer on the tummies.}


{Camryn hitched a ride on this car while Mason was trying not to blow chunks 50 feet away.}


{Ah, the dragon ride.}


{Because one spinning ride deserves another. Swings sit well with this kid!}



{Do any rides not spin?}



{We breezed through the Fest in under three hours with two lemon shake ups and one Jesus Loves Me sticker for the cheek. Until next year!}

Park Crawl

We made the rounds at the parks near our old house today, and this time we brought friends! Such a fun way for the kids to spark memories from days gone by!



{The blue park.}








{The red park.}


{Skipping stones (or trying to pelt ducks) near the bridge}






{The blue and yellow park}


{The purple park}





{The Spider-Man park}
A fun morning spent knocking another item off of our bucket list!

Cousin Fun

Because my mom watches my brother's kids on Wednesdays, we have decided to turn that day into a weekly all-cousin field trip day. The kids have had so much fun exploring new places near our house!

The first adventure: A free "zoo" in a neighboring town. The kids breezed through the zoo to get to the playground at the end! We ate a picnic lunch and had time for a swim at my parents' pool to cap off our day!





Adventure #2: A pioneer farm. The kids loved this place! We rode ponies, both real and fake, we hopped on a train, a tractor, and a paddle boat. And we visited an old schoolhouse, a blacksmith shop, and a weaver's studio. This was a fun and exhausting day!


















Adventure #3: Blueberry picking. My favorite adventure because who doesn't love to pick and eat fresh fruit?! The kids loved this activity for about 20 minutes, and then the heat turned them rotten. So we loaded up and headed back for an afternoon at the pool!











Fun memories made, for sure!