Our Growing Family

Friday, December 16, 2011

The "Center"

Abby is a huge fan of the St. Louis Science Center or as she calls it "the center." This past week with Auntie Sally in tow we made the trek to the center for some hands on fun. Best part the center is Free! Being a school day we had the place to ourselves. We parked near the planetarium and took the bridge to the center so Abby could check out all the cool astronaut memorabilia they have, sorry no pics of it. Abby loves astronauts. Plus there are a lot of hands on activities on the bridge for kids. Most have scientific reasons for being there, Abby just thought they were for playing with.

Traffic accident!

Learning to use the bridge

Abby and Mommy attempting to put together a bridge....

Complete failure... we should have brought Daddy.

Noah laughing at our lack of progress

We made a virtual fish

Plus one of Abby's favorite rooms, dinosaurs! They have real fossils from different dinosaurs found in the US plus models of those dinosaurs so the kids can identify them.
In this picture Abby is holding part of the frill from a triceratops. There are a few volunteers in this room too and since no one else was there Abby was able to ask questions and take a lot of time learning about the bones.

In another area is a model tornado, Noah loved it.

It freaked Abby out, this was as close as she would get and this took a while.

We watched a show while we were there call Splat! we've seen it multiple times. This time there was a small audience and Abby even volunteered! She had to hold a cup while water was dropped from 60 feet above and she had to catch it.

You can kind of see the water drops coming down.

They also have a bird exhibit, with a ton of hands on exhibits. She loved it.

Thursday, December 8, 2011

Minnesota Thanksgiving

For the first time in more than five years I was able to get the Thanksgiving holiday off so we decided to pack up the kids and head to Minnesota. We drove up on a Wednesday, it was a long day in the car. The kids weren't impressed with the 10 hour car ride or the rush hour traffic we hit once we were near St. Paul. We stayed at Bobo's place with Gabby the cat. The kids stayed true to their routine waking up on Thanksgiving morning at 4am! Bobo even woke up with us to entertain the kiddos before the sun was up.

Thanksgiving morning Jon and Anna came over and we headed to Ihop for brunch. The kiddos loved the pancakes, afterwards we hung out at Bobo's letting the kids burn off some energy.

Laughing it up with Aunt Anna.

There was a small pile of snow outside of Bobo's place, just enough to make one small snowman.

Thanksgiving evening we headed over to Gram's house to eat with Jon and Anna, my Aunt Heather and her twins Alanis and Shelby. We had a wonderful time, after dinner us "kids" took the kids to the local park. I think it was the first Minnesota Thanksgiving I remember heading to a park not to sled but play on the playground.

Running for the slides!

Slides, slides and more slides!

Uncle Jon teaching Noah to do the rings, while daddy played on the zipline.

On the swings!

Daddy telling Abby all about how he proposed to Mommy on a digger... so many years ago.

When we got back to the house it was time for pie, and Grams had even picked up candles to celebrate Abby's 3rd birthday. Abby loved it.

Look how happy she is.

Enjoying her own pie...

On Friday we were very low key in the morning, working on a few things at Bobo's house but mostly just hanging out enjoying each others company. Friday afternoon we headed back to Grams for Christmas! Abby helped Grams decorate her Christmas Tree.