St Louis Arch

A family roadtrip took us across the great state of Illinois to St. Louis. We had to stop at the Arch. That's like going to NYC and not seeing the Statue of Liberty or going to Carmel, IN and not seeing the creepy statues.It was a bright, sunny and HOT day. Evie and jim were excited. Annalise not so much.
Evie poses with the Mighty Mississip. The flooding wasn't bad in this area at all, but the river was really flowing.

Annalise and Old Man River

After admiring the view and marveling at the expanse, we decided to go inside and take the ride to the top!

While waiting for our train car, we read about the history of the building of the arch. They started it from both sides at once and had to come withing 100th of an inch for it to all fit together at the top.

Our tram arrived. We had to walk through this tiny door and sit in a circular capsule to get to the top.

IT was so tiny that I couldn't even sit up straight.

At the top, Evie and I admire the view. Since it was such a clear day, we could see pretty far. All the way to the Anheiser Busch Brewery.

The view from the top. That's the ball park that the St. Louis Cardnals play in.

Evie and Jim 630ft up!

Annalise did not like being at the top and refused to look out the windows. Maybe she is afraid of heights?

She felt better when we gave her the camera to take our picture at the top.

Back in the car and headed to our friends' house. Good bye Arch!

And Annalise got her nap. That was just too much excitement.

A big long catch up from June

You know its bad when you start getting facebook messages from people in Wisconsin about updating your blog (Just Kidding). Well, we have been having entirely too much fun this month to be bothered with blogging. Fortunately, for all of you, this fun came with a price of me coming down with some sort of stomache virus. So while I lay around in pain with the very real threat of throwing up the half of banana I ate today, I will get to down to the work of updating the blog. It's that or watch Young and The Restless. Evie decided one evening to construct a large bubble making apparatus. The wind was just perfecct to blow the bubbles and she made lots!
Wow, that one was huge!

Annalise and I just hung out in the chair watching.

Then Annalise decided to get up and pop some of those bubbles

Look closely to see Evie's face in this bubble action shot.

Stay tuned for updates all this week!

Memorial Day Weekend Mega Post

Sit back and get comfy. This is going to be a big one. And also get ready for lots of picture of rocks. So you may have heard that we decided to replace our flagstone path with something that was better set and wasn't over flowing with mud. First step was to get the existing stone up, carve out the actual path and remove all tree roots. That all happened last weekend when Grandma and Grandpa Taller were here. Grandpa helped us to move a lot of soil and tree roots. He also helped us choose the right materials. The stone was delivered on Wednesday, but we had a few days of rain, so no work could be done. Friday, it finally started to clear up so I started moving the crushed stone into the pathway. I had to leave a space for Jim to make an adjustment to the the drainage.
Yes, Grandpa, we decided to route the drainage under the path.

Then we had to take the trusty "pick up truck" to pick up a compactor from our favorite heavy machinery rental place. There hasn't been much that doesn't fit in the back of the Volvo.

So we fired it up and started compacting all the stone. Man, that thing was a beast. It more pulled me along than me controling it. It was fun though!

After all the stone was nice and dense, we brought in the sand.

I just wanted to take a quick shot of all the stuff that was delivered to our house. There was actually a third bag that had crushed stone in it also.

Then, Jim decided to compact the sand down into the stone. I have to say, that we made a lot of mistakes and maybe could have shaved 4 or 5 hours off this project if we knew what we were doing. This was a step we could have skipped.

So where are all the children, you ask? We sent them next door for lunch and constant playing. These kids were only inside to sleep this weekend. What a great start to summer vacation.

Back at the jobsite, I started laying the flagstone into the sand.

We were assisted by our good friends in the neighborhood, Karen and Jeremy. Thank goodness they were here to help us get this edging in and lay some stone before a big thunderstorm hit.

End of day one and we made it to the gate! Woo hoo!

Day 2, race day. Ladies and Gentlemen, start your suncreen!

Here I am rounding turn two onto the back straighaway.

Of course, we had the radio set to listen to all the prerace pagentry. I thought I may have heard the jets start to circle and I looked up to see a stealth bomber!

It flew over about 7 or 8 times before flying over the track at the end of the National Anthem. Also, this year, they had a fly over at the end too! We were at the pool when the 4 F18's were circling.

Once all the stone was set in sand, we wet it down to see what it would look like and help any loose sand settle. Then we called it a day and hit the pool and spent the rest of the day relaxing and avoiding all TV and radio so as to not know who won the race. As a matter of fact, it's been at least 28 hours since the end of the race and I am only just up to watching lap 40. Don't tell me how it ends! We even threw out the newspaper so we wouldn't know!

That night, we roasted some marshmallows. Take this from us, those giant marshmallows are cool, but really hard to roast and eat. I would skip buying them for your next roast.

There's other stuff in our yard right now too. The garden is growing really well. It's going to love this heat this week.

This is our experiment this year. Our hops plant. With the heat this weekend, it grew about 2 inches. In the heat of summer, it can grow up to 12 inches in a day!

And finally, on Memorial day, we swept the P gravel into the cracks and called it complete!!! We celebrated with a trip to the pool.

We are really pleased with how it turned out. Now we can sit back and enjoy the rest of the summer.

Race Day!!!

The peonies are blooming, school is out, my cooler is full of beers--It's race Day! The number one best thing about living where we do is that we are in the flight path for fly overs on Race Weekend. What could be more American than me standing in my backyard, listening to some Skynyrd, drinking a cold beer and having three fighter jets fly over my house? Top that, Aunt Becky.

Dirt Balls

Sunday was a dirty, dirty day. But it didn't start out that way.You know when you watch Househunters on HGTV and the people always look at the back deck. The realtor says, you can really see yourself sitting out there and enjoying a cup of coffee. Whatever. Who does that? How often does that happen? Well, after hearing a realtor say it to me over 4 years ago, I sat on my deck, enjoyed a cup of coffee and read the Sunday paper on my mother's day present love seat. Then it rained. I have a goal to do this every week now.
As the day progressed, we had 2 sudden rainstorms. But that didn't make the kids go inside. Instead, they camped out in the neighbor's screened in porch. Then played after the rain and proceeded to get really muddy and dirty. This was the end of the day. Dirt Balls.

The larger dirt ball you see in this picture went out to work on the new pathway in the mud (more on the new pathway in future posts). He attempted to break out some recently exposed concrete with the neighbor. They managed to both get covered in grime while busting up the concrete and Glenn's sledgehammer. At least they both had a beer to celebrate the victory of Man v. Concrete.

Everyone was so competely filthy that we ate outside on the deck.

These pictures don't really capture the complete dirt picture of these two.

But, out of the three, Dad wins the most dirty award because he had mud in his ear.

The girls' treasure hunt

As I said in a previous post, Grandma Taller always makes treasure hunts. This time, she may have outdone herself as it was an outside hunt for a most excellent treasure. The girls' partners in crime, Paige and Taylor were assistants in finding the clues.
Evie and Paige-y comtimplate the next clue.

I guess at this point, they were sent to the grapevine together.

And the treasure. Not only were they assistants in finding clues, but also with the unwrapping of the treasure.

Fairy statues for the yard. The girls were so excited and carried them all around the yard to find a perfect home for them. At one point, they were living in the front yard. I managed to convince them that the fairies would be happier in the back and we could even make a special garden for the fairies.

The idea of a fairy garden set them in motion. Since this picture, there have been several more rocks and a few plants added to the garden. Thanks Grandma!

Grandma's Treasure Hunt

Grandma Taller always comes armed with a treasure hunt for the girls. This time the treasure at the end was a couple of fairy statues for the yard (oh yes, there was a fairy garden constructed for them--there will be a post on that later). Evie decided to make Grandma work for her birthday present this year and made a treasure hunt for Grandma! Evie wrote and hid all the clues in the front yard while Annalise distracted Grandma in the back yard.
Grandma had to look pretty hard to find all the clues.

And when she found her loot, there were assistants on hand to help her open her gift.

We gave Grandma a Scentsy plug in with some scents. Everyone had to try smelling all the smells.

Last day of Ladybugs

It's getting to be that time of year. Annalise's school year has come to a close. She has completed all the coursework for the Ladybug class and now will move on to the Giraffe class next year. Her preschool always ends the year with a big bike rally. The children get to decorate their bikes and ride around the parking lot. I think there were only a few crashes.
All the little Ladybugs. They are growing up so fast. They sang us a couple songs.

And then each child brought a guest up to dance the wiggle song with them. Annalise chose Grandma Taller who was in for a visit this weekend.

These are Annalise's teachers, Miss Annie and Miss Yvetta. They are a couple special ladies.

And we finished off the bike rally with a picnic. It was a beautiful morning!