Magic House with the Greenwoods!

We have made so many wonderful friends here in STL. One of our very favorites to hang out with are the Greenwoods. Kaden is Braxton's best friend, Kylie is SO FLIPPING CUTE and Bailey just LOVES her, and baby Kenzie... I could just eat her up! They invited us to come play at the Magic House with them back in October. Of COURSE we said yes! Mckenzie was ticked that she missed out... school day. We had a complete blast and got some really cute pictures too. Thanks for an awesome day Sabrina!!! We love you guys!!!

Squeezes from Grandma, Pa Pa & Mashoo

My mom came to town to watch my niece and nephew while my sister, Amanda, had surgery. We got to drive her to Quincy from the airport. She ended up coming over her birthday so Amanda & I took her out for a delicious Italian dinner to celebrate and then we headed back to St. Louis. A week later my dad and Matt drove up to take mom back home once Amanda recovered. The kids got to give them some squeezes before they headed home. So grateful that we live so much closer to them now and we get to see them so much more often!

Flat Stanley in St. Louis!

HI! My name is Flat Stanley! Abby Springer, who lives in Mesa, Arizona, sent me to visit the Bowman Family. They live in St. Louis, Missouri. That is a 1,457 mile trip! Here is a picture of St. Louis and the Gateway Arch on the banks of the Mississippi River. You can go to the tippy top of the inside of the arch on a tram and look out little windows to see the city below! 

The first thing I did in St. Louis was go to a play-doh party at the library with my buddy, Braxton. Braxton is 4 and he loves baseball, transformers, dinosaurs and playing outside. He was so excited to take me to the play-doh party that he didn't even have time to cut me out! 

The party was so fun. Afterwards we picked out some awesome books to check out and take home. Braxton's favorite book is Bugs Galore, by Peter Stein. It is HILARIOUS! Braxton and I were cracking up!

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St. Louis is also home to the World Champion baseball team, The Cardinals! The Bowman's are BIG Cardinals fans. We went to a day game with Braxton's dad on Thursday. Baseball is so fun to watch especially when your favorite team wins, and the Cardinals did! GO CARDS!

Braxton and his sisters, McKenzie and Bailey, took me along with them to their building workshop at Lowes. They built firetrucks with wood, nails and a hammer. It was noisy but really neat! They had to follow the directions very carefully or their firetruck wouldn't work. They did pretty good! I got to hang out in Kenzie's apron pocket while she worked.

We also went to a pet store to buy crickets for Braxton's hungry Grey Tree Frog, Al. Braxton found Al in his front yard a few weeks ago. His mom and dad let him keep him as long as he promised to take good care of him. At the pet store I jumped in the cricket bin and they crawled all over me! It was creepy! Braxton's favorite animal at the pet store was the bearded dragon lizard and McKenzie's favorite was the conure parrot. 

When we got home McKenzie colored me a new outfit. It was very colorful. The kids were all playing with Al the frog after he ate his dinner. They said I could go in his cage and hold him. I was pretty nervous but Braxton told me to be brave. He felt sticky and bumpy and cold. I'm glad I was brave! It was neat holding a real live frog!

Al got me all wet and dirty so McKenzie had to color me a new outfit before it was time to go home.

I had so much fun in St. Louis with the Bowman's, but I am excited to get back home to Abby & her class! SEE YOU SOON!!!

Rainy Day Boredom Busters

We had a TON of rain in September and the kids were driving me NUTS! We had to be creative so i didn't LOSE IT haha. Here are a few of our rainy day boredom busters... we made marshmallow toothpick 3-D shapes (which, of course, turned into an army tank thanks to B), we colored on the windows with dry erase markers (Volcanoes and dinosaurs were the theme - and B made a super weird face...big shocker), we learned how to do head stands, and we painted... A LOT!

Meet Al!

Braxton was helping me take out the trash one day and he started YELLING at me... MOM COME HERE COME HERE... There was a fat cute little grey tree frog in our yard. Wussy wouldn't catch it though so mom had to do the dirty work. Long story short, I caved and we have a new pet... joy. hahaha Braxton named him Al. Why buddy? Al, like Albert Pujols? "No mom, just Al, he looks like an Al". He also calls him soldier because he looks camouflaged. Meet Al...

Summer Ends & School Begins...

I was SO sad when I looked at the calendar and realized that there were only two weeks left of summer break. BOOOOOO! We have managed to squeeze a TON into our summer but we still had time for a few more adventures before McKenzie started FIRST GRADE!

We ventured out one sunny day to a state park with an awesome creek to have some good ol' outdoor fun like when I was a kid : ) The kids had SO much fun... Picnic lunch, skipping rocks, catching guppies, getting dirty... perfect afternoon!

My kids all picked up a habit this summer... Seed Spittin... wonder where they got it? Weird! Any time Daddy pulls out the seeds (which is OFTEN) they all have to get in on the action. Bailey comes yelling "WANT PICEYS!" Because the first ones she tried Rich told here were spicey (jalapeno flavored). She loved them anyway and now calls them piceys.

We got to watch my niece Rilea and nephew Dylan overnight for the first time so my lil sister Amanda and her hubby Chris could have a fun anniversary.  For weeks before my kids would not leave me the heck alone asking "How many more days before the sleepover???" We were so excited to have them all to ourselves and so grateful that we only live a couple hours away. The kids did great, had a blast and slept like rocks. MAN i love these little stinkers! Rilea loves making bailey laugh and doing zerbers or raspberrys on baileys tummy did the trick. Mckenzie loves making Dylan laugh and he enjoys abuse so she would drag him by the leg across the carpet and he would DIE laughing. Dylan loves eating... EVERYTHING! And Rich loves feeding him and seeing how much he can put down. Rich just kept saying "This kid is AMAZING! He is a MACHINE!" Yes he is! And Bailey loved that Dylan holds still while she puts bows and clips in his hair. And Braxton loved that Kenz & Ri could both fit in his sleeping bag too hahaha. Ahhhhhh cousins... nothing better! Thanks Amanda and Chris for having such cute kids and trusting us to keep them alive haha. We love you guys!!!

Beautiful Saturday + Hunger Pains = DDD Joint Pappy's BBQ To Go at Forest Park! We have been dying to try "The best BBQ in STL" since we moved here and we finally went for it. We got it to go and took it downtown to Forest Park. The food was just eh (we were crushed!) but the park was gorgeous and the weather was perfect! It is so beautiful there! It was a really fun way to spend an afternoon all though our taste buds were very disappointed : (

After Forest Park we ventured over to another very famous St Louis eatery, Ted Drewes Frozen Custard. We put it off for 2 years because it had SO much hype we didn't think it could measure up. Let's just say our taste buds were no longer disappointed (except when our concrete cups became mysteriously empty!) Our concrete of choice... The Big Apple... literally a slice of mind blowing apple pie blended into mind blowing vanilla custard topped with fresh whipped cream... you guessed it... MIND BLOWING! We literally DREAM about this desert and have been back more times than i care to admit in the past month even though it is a 30 minute drive! It is simply a shack with a bunch of order windows and you stand around and drool till you get your order and eat it in the parking lot or in a tiny little grassy area down the street. Ohhhhh Ted Drewes... why did it take us 2 years to discover your splendor? 

We have an amazing city pool called Aquaport just down the street from us. We have had a blast there this summer and I wanted to get one more visit in before they closed for the season. We met some good friends for some end of summer fun. Problem was it was cloudy with a high temp of 80. The kids FROZE but I still had to bribe them when it was time to go. They were purple lipped and shivering saying "I'm really not cold. PLEASE can we stay longer!"

One more trip to the playground and then home to get Kenz ready for school the next day!

I was looking through videos of the kids today from 2 and 3 years ago and I am AMAZED at how big Mckenzie is. She is so grown up! It makes me so sad : ( We had a fantastic summer but she was SO ready to go back to school. Her new teacher, Mrs. Hubbard, is wonderful and she gets to sit at real desks this year instead of little round "baby tables" like last year. I am proud to say that I didn't cry when she got on the bus this year! For some reason though I teared up after going to lunch with her that day at school. Oh well. There is always next year to be tough, right? Oh wait - next year Braxton starts Kindergarten, so that's out! Haha. Well here is my big First Grader in all her beautiful pink glory on her first day of school - 2012!

A Smith Weekend!!!

I honestly can't remember when the last time was that my entire family was together. It has been way too many years! My Brother, Mitch, and my new sister-in-law, Faye, and my new niece, Melissa, got to come to the states from England on leave. We were so excited to meet the newest members of our family! Meet Faye & Melissa! These are a couple of my favorite wedding pics! 

Everyone got to come up to St. Louis for the weekend. There is something about having your entire family in one place that can't be matched! Here are some fun pictures of the weekend...

I told the kids they could have capri suns if they stayed in the kitchen so the weirdos bunched up in the corner together...

Melissa & Mitchy! Faye & Melissa fit right in to our family. Hopefully Faye hasn't changed her mind about being a part of our family after being subjected to all of the craziness that is the Smith clan. I didn't expect to bond with them so quickly! They are just that awesome and I love them both! And I am SO excited about baby boy smith coming soon!!! We just have to work on the whole living across the ocean thing... not convenient! : )

 I wanted a pic of Grandma & Dylan but there was food near him so that was NOT going to happen. This kid NEVER stops eating!

Everyone drove through the night to get here so they were exhausted! Sarah passed out first so i had to pick on her : )

The Men all went to a Cardinal's game and Hunter was cheering on the cards form home. HAHAHA 

 As always the only thing on McKenzie's mind was cooking with Grandma! Bailey got to join in this time too! Mmmmmmm Blueberry Pancakes!

When Amanda is here it means one thing... McKenzie will beg to get her hair done!

 The kids were cracking me up! Every time the front door opened moths would fly in. The girls (McKenzie, Melissa, Ragen & Rilea) would empty out my cup drawer and try to catch them. At one point they had 4 cups with bugs under them in the front room. They would scream their heads off and pounce... 

I think Uncle Rich spent most of his time feeding or teasing the little boys : ) I swear Dylan could've taken out that whole burger if we would've let him! Hunter and rich became fast friends once Hunter found out Rich was a sucker for a kid who likes freezer pops as much as he does hahaha

 Bailey's favorite seat in the house...

We spent an afternoon at the Zoo. Their favorite part was petting the stingrays! Bailey didn't even realize they were in the water for a while... she just loved splashing and not getting in trouble haha. I helped Melissa touch one of them and she screamed "I DID IT!" In her ridiculously adorable accent : )

I loved the panguin cave because it was about 50 egress in there haha. McKenzie was freezing though haha. Ragen loved being so close to them. LOVE that smile!

All the cousins had so much and with that much fun comes a little bit of a mess... UNDERSTATEMENT! The girls literally emptied out every single bin, box, drawer, shelf and basket in their quest for successfully playing with every single toy we have. QUEST COMPLETE! The other mom's just felt guilty about the mess but I thought it was hilarious!   this is one room of the destruction...

Before saying our goodbyes we took some family pictures. NO telling when we all be together again. Hopefully not multiple years again : (

The ENTIRE Smith Family!

 The Girlies

 All the Grandkiddos!

The original 7... not near as much fun as the whole gang!

 The fab 5! Matt was not happy that we made him do this pose...

So we all violated him.. BAAAHAHA

We packed a lot of fun into 3 days! Great memories! Thank you all for coming up. I know it was a sacrifice and i really appreciate it! Missing you like crazy already! (Well mostly your kids haha)