Annual 4th of July Pictures

The first 4th of July that Avery was born, I got the kids dressed up in their 4th of July outfits and took them up to the park to take a few pictures of them together. This has since become a little tradition of mine, so I couldn't let this year go by without their yearly 4th of July photo!

For comparison sake, here are all 3 of our Fourth of July pictures so far!

And here are a few more from our little backyard mini session this year.

Five on Friday

 

 

Happy Friday!

Today I'm linking up with Christina, April and Natasha for Five on Friday!



This past Saturday, I took the kids to our community pool. It was the first time we've been there since moving and we had so much fun. The kids really loved it!

We signed Avery up for a second 6-week gymnastics class and we also signed Jackson up for a tumbling class. They both love it and have so much fun!

My mom has several bird feeders out in our back yard and we are really enjoying watching the birds come to them. Earlier this week we had 6 yellow canary finches in our back yard at one time. They are SO cute!!

Speaking of our yard, we have been pleasantly surprised by all of the flowers that have come up in our yard this year, especially these hydrangeas. They are so pretty!

Happy Weekend everyone!! We have a birthday party to go to tonight, I have a baby shower and 1 year twins photo session tomorrow and then Sunday is our church picnic!! Should be a busy but fun weekend!

Father's Day 2016

This year, we spent Father's Day at the Cardinals Game. Jackson's T-Ball league had their Affton Day at the Ballpark, so we got discounted tickets, free lunch and we were able to walk the field. 

It was hot, but thankfully our seats were in the shade, so that made it nice. There was a breeze and I think we all had a pretty good time. The kids weren't really all that into the game, but they enjoyed being at the big stadium and had a lot of fun.

They had a camera on the field as we were walking around and you could see yourself on the big screen!

Jackson on the big screen!

The Cardinals happened to be playing the Rangers this day (which is what Jackson's team name is, but of course, we were still rooting for our Cardinals).

Rangers Dug-Out

Cardinals Dug-Out

After walking in the parade around the field, we headed up to get lunch, find our seats and enjoy the game.

We took a quick family selfie before leaving. The cardinals ended up losing, but it was fun anyways.

After the game we headed home to relax. Jake helped Jackson put some legos together that he had been wanting Daddy to help him with. Daddy of the year right here!

Later that evening, we went to the grocery store to get some stuff to make dinner and we stopped by the redbox to rent a movie for the kids. We rented The Charlie Brown Movie and it was really cute! It was a great Father's Day!

Project Life 2016: Week 21

My Project Life page for week 21 of 2016.

I used the Love and Friendship Mini Kit Freebie from The Digi Crafter.

Explore St. Louis: Castlewood State Park

A couple weeks ago, Jake and I decided to take the kids on a hike at Castlewood State Park. This is a nearby State Park that is about 15-20 minutes away from our house. I've seen a lot of pictures and they all looked beautiful, so I had been really wanting to go check it out. 

I could give you a short and sweet version of this little adventure of ours, but to have the true version to look back on (and hopefully laugh about) I'm going to give you the longer version.

Of course, the day we planned to go was on a Saturday and we woke up to rain. But later in the afternoon it cleared up. So we thought we'd go once Avery woke up from her nap. Avery decided to take a long nap that day though, so we were pushing it on time. I had done a little research and found a trail that took you to the cliff that over-looks the river, but was only about a mile and a half long. The estimated time was about an hour, so we had time to go but would only have a little bit of time to spare beyond that hour before it would start getting dark. We still decided to go and thought we'd be just fine. 

 

We packed water, snacks and all the things I thought we'd need, forgetting the most important... bug spray! We even mentioned that we needed to grab the bug spray, but in the chaos of getting 2 kids ready and out the door (you moms know what I mean) we forgot the bug spray. Well how bad could it be, we thought. Ha.

We found the park and trail easily. We were doing great, taking turns carrying Avery along and managing quite well. Jackson found a walking stick right off the bat and we were all excited to get to the top. We made it up to several look-outs and the view was gorgeous, just as I expected it would be.

At some point though, the trail we were on merged with a longer trail. I'm not even sure where we went wrong but we ended up down several flights of stairs and down right along the river. This would have been totally okay with me except we were running out of daylight and the mosquitos down there were literally trying to carry us off. I was starting to get a little panicked because I was worried we wouldn't make it back to our car in time before it got dark. It didn't help that Jake was hot, tired and getting irritated that we somehow got turned around and Jackson was going crazy with the mosquitos buzzing around his ears. He kept saying, "these bugs are making me nervous." Ha. Thankfully, Avery is still too young to care and was just happy to be outside. 

We walked quickly though and thankfully found our way back to the car with only a sliver of daylight to spare and unfortunately, a ton of mosquito bites! I was never so happy to see the car! I ended up counting around 30 mosquito bites on myself and around 10 on each of the kids. Jake somehow came out with very few (not sure how that's possible.) 

However, minus the mosquito bites and getting a little lost, I'm really glad we did it and we did have a good time for the first half of the trail. I'd really like to go back when we can go in the morning and remember the bug spray! It's a really nice State Park with very nice trails, playgrounds and creeks. The views from the top are spectacular and there are train tracks that run right alongside the Meramec River, so the kids loved seeing the trains go by. It was something really fun to do as a family and I'm looking forward to a day when we can go back.