April Catch-up

Well, I'm doing a "catch-up" post as I have been so busy recently that I haven't had much time to blog or take pictures for that matter.

When we got back from St. Louis, some neighbors of ours invited us to spend the day with them in Chicago.  We went to the Musuem of Science and Industry first.  After that we went to the American Girl Store and ate at the Water Tower Place Mall. 

I really didn't take many pictures that day - a couple at the musuem and a couple at the mall

Paige having strawberry crepes for dessert at Water Tower
Place-Food for Life

Ashley at Candy World with dresses made of candy wrappers

After Spring Break, soccer started up in earnest for both Paige and Ashley so we have busy with practices almost every night of the week along with games.  Fortunately, Ashley plays during the week and Paige on Saturday, so we don't have to worry about conflicts.

The first week of April was General Conference and we had our good friends over with us again on Sunday.  Afterward, we had a few more friends come over and had a barbecue hot dog/sausage buffet.  We had a bunch of different kinds of hot dog and sausages - beef jalapeno, brats, chicken apple, chicken artichoke, etc., etc. along with all kinds of toppings.  It was fun.

Conference was wonderful, although I know that mostly from having read the talks online after.  For some reason, I was unusually sleepy on Saturday and I also thought it would be fun to put together a basket of quiet listening activities and treats for the girls, but honestly it just ended up being more of a distraction.  My girls are old enough to just sit and listen.  I should have just stuck with the puzzle.  We did do a puzzle, but we didn't even put it up until Sunday. 

Our conference puzzle - the State of Illinois

The following weekend was Easter and began on Saturday morning with a Primary Easter Egg Hunt and service project.  I took Paige, it was a really fun activity.  After that, the girls colored Easter eggs and I made a bunch of cookies to take to a ward baptism.  Two of Paige's friends from Primary were baptized that day.  It was a great service and we were so happy for our friends and their families.  Later that evening we joined the families for a celebration dinner and get-together.  After the dinner, I ran Paige over to another friend's house for a flashlight Easter egg hunt--that was pretty fun too!

Paige working on the Primary service project

hunting for Easter Eggs

getting ready for the flashlight egg hunt

On Easter Sunday, we enjoyed all of our traditions, including Easter baskets in the morning.  Paige was very excited to get a giant chocolate Easter Bunny.  She also got a bird book, so she and her dad can identify all the birds that come to her bird feeder.  Ashley got the game Farkle, which should make for some fun gametime.  Both Dave and I had to teach lessons at church and in the hustle and bustle of getting to church on time, I forgot to put the ham in the oven.  Fortunately, we still had time to cook the ham after and just ate a little later than planned.  It was nice to go to church and just forget about everything else and focus on recognizing the significance of Easter. 

I'm kicking myself for not taking more pictures on this day.  Both the girls had new Easter dresses but I completely forgot to take a picture.  This is Paige in her dress, it's just not on Easter morning.

Easter bags

After Easter, I feel like things really picked-up steam on the calendar, especially in the church activities category.  First off, the YW Laurels hosted a Teacher Appreciation Dinner for their favorite teachers.  It was a small event, but still required preparing food, serving a meal, and planning a program.  I was the only adult available that night so I had my hands full and was a little stressy trying to get everything ready but in the end it went really well and a was a good success.  I'm hoping we can do it again next year.

Unfortunately and unexpectedly, we attended a memorial service on the weekend.  A friend who was pregnant, lost her baby.  We are not exactly sure what happened but the mother was far enough along that she did have to deliver the baby after the baby's heart had stopped beating. This was the very same family that had just baptized one of their sons the week before.  They are such good and amazing people and we know what a difficult experience and sad loss it was for them, but I know their strong faith is a great comfort to them.  I visit teach the mother and the father actually home teaches us, so we wanted to do everything we could to help and support them.  They held a graveside and memorial service for their daughter on Saturday and I organized refreshments for after the service and Dave actually spoke about the Plan of Salvation at the Memorial service.

The next day at church, Paige gave a GREAT talk.  I helped her with some ideas but she wrote it herself.  It was about following the example of Jesus.  Unfortunately, I was teaching somewhere else at the same time she was speaking, so I didn't get to see it, but Dave assures me she was awesome!  Later that evening, we headed back to church for a tribute night to the high school seniors in our ward who are graduating.  It is called Pearls of Wisdom and is a really fun program that acknowledges the seniors and gives them a chance to give advice and share their "pearls of wisdom" with the rest of the youth.  It's always really interesting to hear what they say and gives you a great insight into what their families are like, who they are and who they will become.

The following Tuesday, I presented at a Relief Society meeting about different cultures.  Of course, I talked about Thailand and made some sticky rice and mango for everyone to eat.  Just pulling out souvenirs from out trip and looking through the pictures, made me miss Thailand!  It was a fun evening, there were 4 other presenters and it sure made me want to travel around the world more!

The next night, was our youth temple trip.  The kids did over 300 baptisms.  We didn't get home until after 10:30, but we don't get to go often and it really is a blessing to do temple work alongside the youth in our ward.

This past weekend, we had some friends over for a game night.  We are learning to play lots of new games with them so it has been fun.  We taught them Spot It and Rook.  They taught us Settlers of Catan and Nertzs.  We have also played the train game and Farkle.  The girls are always mad when we make them stop playing to go to bed!

On Saturday morning, we got up early.  Dave took Ashley to her engineering workshop and Paige and I went over to the school for a Healthy Families Day and did a 1 mile Fun Run.  I'm happy to report we survived the mile run!  Right after the run, we jumped in the car and raced over to Paige's soccer game.  I told her the run was just a warm up for her game.  I guess it worked because she scored a goal!  First goal of the season for the whole team.

after our run, not a flattering picture

After the game, we went back to the school for the "fair" part of healthy families day.  We walked around and got lots of free handouts and goodies from the vendors.  Paige loves the pedometer that Walgreens was handing out.  We also entered some drawings and Paige won two times!  She won one month of karate lessons as well as admissions to a bouncehouse and free smoothies.  She's pretty excited about her good luck. 

A little later in the evening, Ashley went to a youth activity and the rest of us went with another family in the neighborhood to see the movie Chimpanzee in honor of Earth Day.  It was a good movie, worth seeing.  Although I made Dave come with us and in his words he, "missed watching a White Sox pitcher throw a perfect game because he was at a nature movie."

Afterwards, Paige was disappointed that we said that was enough fun for one day.  We all came home and got to work getting ready for Sunday.  Dave had a lesson to prepare and I had to speak in Sacrament meeing so we had some work to do.

Somewhere in all of this is Paige and I going on a Brownies field trip together, me volunteering at the elementary school, Ashley's school soccer games and engineering meetings, Paige's numerous playdates and social activities, and Dave work, work, working.  As you can see, we are well-stimulated or overloaded, depending on how we are feeling on a certain day!

Paige and her family tree poster hanging at her school

More Good Times in St. Louis

Besides the Arch, there really are a lot of fun things to do in St. Louis.  We didn't have time to do everything, but I think we definitely hit the highlights.

First up is food.  Ya that's right.  The Smith's couldn't really be on vacation unless it involved some culinary overindulgence. 

So we headed to the Del Mar area to eat on the "St. Louis Walk of Fame."  It's sort of a retro area with a walk that has stars for all the famous people from St. Louis.  Here are the girls with Chuck Berry.  He has a star and a statue.

We then ate a nearby place called Fitz's.  This place is a restaurant brewery, but they don't brew beer.  They brew rootbeer and soda pop.  It was so fun.  In addition to rootbeer, they do cream soda, orange, strawberry, and grape pop.  The menu included lots of yummy burgers, sandwiches and ice cream/soda floats.  I ordered a Kobe beef burger with grilled onions on a pretzel bun and Dave had a club sandwich made with turkey breast they smoke in-house.  It was delicious and enough to keep us full for the whole day.

After lunch, we felt like we needed to "walk it off" so we went to the St. Louis Zoo.  The zoo is free and it is really nice.  We had a great time and the sunny weather only made it better.

After the zoo, we headed over by recommendation to Ted Drewes for some frozen custard.  This is famous in St. Louis and there was a line-up.  It was good but a little too melty for me, I prefer a thicker custard, but it was still worth it.

The fun continued the next day for the girls and I.  Dave went into the office so us gals decided to check out the City Musuem.  All the guide books and tourist pamphlets raved about the City Museum.  We have some pretty good museums in Chicago, so honestly visiting another children's museum wasn't high on my to-do list.  I was leaning towards going the Anheuser-Busch brewery tour and seeing the Clydesdale horses, but since Dave wasn't going to be with us, I opted for the City Museum.  And all I can say is wow, I mean W-O-W!  WOW!!!  This place is awesome!  The children's museum in Indianapolis is supposed to be the best in the country, I've been there and I like the City Museum more.

The only caveat about the City Museum is that it is not really suited for little kids. (It actually has late hours for teenagers and adults.)  My girls were the perfect age.  The reason I say this is because it is literally impossible to keep your child in your sight 100% of the time.  Well, I take that back you could keep an eye on your kids if you are willing to climb through the wall, shimmy through tunnels, slide down slides, etc. Otherwise, you just have to accept that your kids are going to disappear for a while as they explore.  My rule was that the girls had to stay together.

Outisde climbing structure



The whole museum is like one big salvage yard.  Nothing here is pre-fab molded plastic.  It's mostly steel and metal welded together into a wonderland of bridges, tunnels, stairways and slides.  The museum extends inside and out.  Outside you can climb into a suspended airplane, climb in a fire engine, or jump in a huge ball pit.  And throughout the whole structure their are slides everywhere.  You never know where you will end up or when you'll find a hidden slide.

You could spend your whole day outside and have a blast but then you would be missing out on all the treasures inside.  There is a whole indoor industrial cave-like exhibit.  The lights are dim and you climb around rocks and ramps and discover hidden holes and slides.  If you stick with it you actually climb up and up to reach the top of the 10-story twisty slide.  Oh yeah!  This was pretty fun.  I did it with the girls twice.  Paige climbed up a third time while Ash and I caught our breath on the conveniently placed couches located at the bottom of the slide.



Not good lighting, since I took this picture while standing underground.
But one of those spiraling structures is the 10 story slide.


Just a little more about slides at the City Museum.  If you love slides this place is for you.  It is slide heaven.  There are literally slides everywhere, seen and unseen.  Why walk down the stairs when you can take a slide?  Want to explore a hole in the ground?  Go for it, it probably leads to a slide.  Big slides, little slides, drop slides, covered slides, slides, slides, slides!

Climbing in a underground cave.  Note Paige disappearing
into a dark hole, that happens to be... a slide

 Here are a few more pictures of the museum, what a great place we loved it!!

Playing on the skate ramps

face painting too!

Indoor exhibit, the walls are mosaic and the ceiling
is feathered ribbon

human hamster wheel

And finally, no St. Louis adventure would be complete without some barbecue and it has to be good.  So it was award-winning Pappy's for us.  If it's any indication of it's popularity.  Pappy's is open most days "until 7 or 8" because that's about the time they run out of food.

Thanks for a good time St. Louis! 

The St. Louis Gateway Arch

We did a bunch of fun stuff in St. Louis but the main event was the Arch.

Leaning against the Arch

The Arch really is impressive, especially when you see it in person.  It is just so beautiful, big and shiny.  It is located in a park right on the Mississippi River.  Above ground the Arch stands on a big grassy field.  You actually have to go underground to access the Arch.  The Forest Service has a very nice Musuem of Westward Expansion and a visitors center underground.

We looked around the museum and visitors center while we waited for our turn to go up in the Arch.
This was the main event and we were all very excited, even if we had to squeeze into a little pod to get to the top.

This is a replica of the little elevator pod that you have to sit in to ride to the top of the Arch.  "Little" being the keyword.  It's a tight fight with a very low ceiling.  They have these replicas near the ticket lines so you can test if you fit.  Luckily, we all fit!

They have a nice, time-period holding area, as you wait to go up.

From the underground visitors center, you have to do down another 50 or so feet to get to the elevators that will take you to the top of the Arch.  Paige and are standing in front of our elevator door.  It's pretty small, even I had to duck to get in!

riding to the top, so small, I couldn't even keep my finger out
of the picture!

The ride was pretty fun, there is a window in your car so you can see "out" into the inside of the Arch.  There are stairs inside and lots of duct work, etc.  As you ride to the top, you car is attached at the top to some type of gear and pulley system.  You can hear and feel your car notch into gear to keep you upright even as the Arch starts to curve.
Once you get to the top you walk up a few steps and are basically standing in a long arched hallway with skinny, horizontal windows to look out of.  Nothing fancy, because there is no room for it, but honestly, you don't need fancy because the views are spectacular!  The city on one side and the Mississippi on the other.  We went up on a perfectly clear day, the pictures I took were with my iPhone camera through a window and look how beautiful they still are. 

The red is Busch Stadium.  What a beautiful ball park.  Dave and I have
already decided the next time we come back it has to be during baseball
season.

Meet Me in St. Louis!

This year, we weren't planning to go anywhere for Spring Break, but Paige has been asking to go to St. Louis for a while.  She learned about the Arch at school and ever since has wanted to go up inside it.  So as Spring Break approached, Dave and I thought, "why not?" 

St. Louis is only a 4 hour drive from our home and in comparison to Chicago, it's a relatively inexpensive city, so we decided to pack up the car and head south for a couple of days. 
Honestly, St. Louis was never on my list of destinations and I'm sure it is not on yours, but really it should be.  What great little city.  We had so much fun and enjoyed everything about our stay.

First off, we loved, loved our hotel.  We stayed right across the street from the Arch in the Drury Plaza.  We had never stayed at this chain before but I would definitely recommend it now.  Our room was very nice, with comfy queen-size beds.  The girls also loved the indoor pool.  The fun part was the huge breakfast and dinner they serve every day.  Breakfast is usually a given but dinner that was a plus.  The dinner meal was more of the concession stand variety but when you have kids with you why not just grab a hot dog, nachos, soup, salad, chicken strips or macaroni and cheese for dinner?  That's all they eat anyway.  The free popcorn and soda pop in the evenings were also a big hit with the girls.

Paige and pancakes for breakfast

In the lobby of our hotel, a tribute to Lewis and Clark and
Westward exploration

Another plus about our hotel was that it was literally right across the street from Dave's office.  He had some calls he couldn't miss on one day, so he went into the office while the girls and I did some sightseeing...so convenient. 

We also caught a really lucky break with the weather.  It was beautiful and warm, near 80 degrees.  Our first night we walked through the park where the Arch is located, sat on the banks of the Mississippi and then just strolled through the downtown area.  Usually, the downtown would be more quiet in the evening but we happened to be in town during the NCAA Men's basketball tournament.  The BIG game was UNC vs. Kansas.  I'm pretty sure Dave was only half-joking and secretly hoping I would say, "yes!" when he offered to buy four $100 tickets to the game for the family.