Look how much we've grown!

It has become a tradition of ours to measure up next to the pumpkin at Thies Farm Pumpkinland. We have done it for the past three years now and here is how much each of the kids have grown.
Here is Joey at 10 months old....

Joey at 1 year 10 months.....

Joey at 2 years 10 months.......

Apparently I didn't get a picture of Andrew 2 years ago so here is his picture last year at 3 years old.....

Andrew at 4 years old.....

I realize now that I really do try to get my money's worth with clothes because apparently I have put Adriana in the exact same outfit for the last three years. No, not the same outfit in different sizes....it is actually the exact same outfit. Maybe its time to buy some new fall clothes!
So here is Adriana at 5 years old.....

Adriana at 6 years old.....

And Adriana at 7 years old.....

It is really fun to compare each of them each year and see how much they change. It would be really neat if I could do this all the way until they are teenagers and decide its no longer cool to go to the pumpkin patch with mommy!

Fall hiking!

I often watch my friend's daughter, Ava, during the week while she is at work. Monday was one of those days that I had her. She goes to half day kindergarten at Willott Christian Academy so she is out at lunch time. Well with Adriana being out of school and having Ava for the day I thought it would be a fun time to go on a hiking trip. I was originally planning on taking all the kids after Andrew got out of school, but I forgot Adriana had gymnastics so we had to go before we picked up Andrew from school. I decided we needed to go somewhere close so we headed back to Busch Wildlife. I really like this trail because it is close and its not a very long hike for the kids. Ava has never really gone hiking before so she was extra excited about it. I know I take tons of pictures wherever we go, and believe me I only actually post a third of the ones I take. So of course here are a few of the pictures from the hike.
The kids were trying to decide which trail to go on.

First we had to make a stop to see if we could see any birds by the birdfeeders.

Then they decided to head on over to the fishless pond.

We spotted many frogs, but this little guy was very brave and just stayed there while we got really close to get a picture.

Stopping to pose on the bridge.



Then we headed inside the building since its never usually open when we visit at night. On this spot they have all kinds of interesting things to learn about various animals and even animal skins you can feel. I love hands on displays for the kiddos.

Adriana was looking at a turtle that had a deformed shell because of it getting stuck in litter. Always a good lesson for kids when they can see first hand how litter can effect everything.

Then we headed outside where they have a large open area where the kids ran around playing tag and hide n seek.

It was a lot of fun and another perfect day to spend outside!

Family bike ride!

It has been such a beautiful month of October and I know our days outside are getting limited so I'm trying to fill in our days with as much outside fun as possible (as you can tell from all of my posts). I especially love fall and spring times with the perfect weather and all the seasonal changes taking place.
On Sunday we decided to go for a family bike ride down the Katy Trail. We started at St. Charles Main Street and headed towards Orchard Farm area. Adriana and Andrew both had their bikes and Joey was in the trailer. Well about a mile in Andrew started saying his legs were getting tired (he also had a soccer game early that afternoon). Luckily we were close to a park and ditched his bike at a bike rack there and he climbed in with Joey. Adriana was a trooper and rode the whole time with us. We were afraid to get too far out because we would have no way to get to our vehicle. We rode about 4 miles out and 4 miles back. I was very impressed with Adriana riding the whole time and not one complaint about being tired came from her mouth. We probably could have gone further but we figured why chance it.

It was a really fun time and once again had perfect weather! Does October really have to end soon?!
I have tons of more fun things planned for this week so stayed tuned!

Night at Grant's Farm!

Not that Chris and I weren't tired enough from being out on a canoe all day, we are just crazy! We decided to take the kids to Grant's Farm since it decided it wasn't going to rain all day. Everyone else must have thought it was going to rain because it wasn't very crowded at all! After we parked our car, it probably only took us about 10 minutes to get on the tram.
Here is the kids waiting to get on the tram. Adriana used her Tinkerbell costume from last year since I didn't have her costume all the way done yet. Andrew was Optimus Prime from the Transformers, and Joey was Scooby Doo. This was the only time you will see Andrew in his complete costume because he decided after that that he didn't want to wear it all.

After getting into the park the kids immediately went to go feed the goats. They all loved it and thought it was so funny! This was actually our first trip to Grant's Farm this year.




Andrew being silly!

After feeding the goats, Chris and I decided to let the kids each pick out a light up item. Here is Adriana and Joey with their wands. I think Andrew was in the bathroom at the time.

Adriana posing with all the spooky people walking around!


Last we went to the dance party, always a favorite of the kids. Joey and Adriana spent a lot of time dancing! In this picture, I was trying to get Joey shaking his butt. It was so cute and of course forgot my video camera and you can't really tell in the picture.

Adriana would just run out into the crowd and dance, dance dance! She is definitely not a shy child!

Andrew sat on the sidelines with us eating a few snacks and playing with his light up sword.

Here we are getting ready to leave.

It was the perfect weather and we could not have asked for a better night! The crowd was small and the rain held off! I know I have heard them talking about closing Grant's Farm down and I really hope it is just rumors because we really do love it!!!!!

Strange fetish!

So Joey has come up with a crazy sock fetish! He is obsessed with putting clean socks on his hands. He loves it when I just get done with laundry and have a bunch of socks. I think in this picture he has two socks on each hand. Yes, he has even gone out in public with the socks on his hands. Its not always worth fighting over and when people ask whats wrong with my kid, I just reply "is there something wrong with wearing socks on your hands?" So thats my boy and I love him for all his strange fetishs!

Not your typical date!

If you know me at all, then you will know how much I love the outdoors. I could spend everyday, all day outside and be in Heaven! So when I think of different ideas for dates for Chris and I, I always try to find things outside. Dinner and a movie is just not my cup of tea for a date. So you can imagine how excited I was when I found a canoe trip down the Meramac River in October. It is a 7 mile guided tour down From Route 66 Park to Castlewood State Park.
Chris and I had so much fun on our date and laughed so hard. At one point, my back started hurting because of sitting up right for hours so he told me to come back and sit in front of him so I could lean against his legs. I guess we were not thinking about how bad of an idea this was in a canoe because we now we back end heavy and started turning all over the place. I was laughing so hard I was crying and we came so close to tipping. After I was finally able to stop laughing so hard and could breathe again, I went back to the front and managed not to tip. Thankfully we were a bit ahead of the others and no one saw it :)
So here is a picture of the happy couple as we set off.

I took tons of pictures of all the beautiful scenery. This was actually a fall foliage trip and the trees were all absolutely beautiful!





You can't see it too well, but there is actually a bald eagle in this picture. I had put my camera down and by the time we saw him and I scrambled for my camera, he was too far away.


I know you can't see it in the pictures too well, but as we were floating down the river we were in a sea of falling leaves which was so beautiful. I took a picture of the leaves on the river that had just blown on us.

This is the sand dune that we stopped to have lunch at. You can still see a lot of people still there eating.

This was some kind of bird nests under one of the bridges. They told us what kind of birds but I can't remember now.

This was a shipwreck boat.


And other than the bald eagle, the only other wildlife we saw was a bunch of turtles. I was hoping to see some beavers or other wildlife, but no such luck this time.

It was so much fun spending the time with my husband and just listening to all the wildlife in the area. I think we will be making this an annual date! Oh and the weather was perfect. It was calling for rain all week so I said many prayers for it to hold out, and thankfully it did! It started off a little chilly and overcast but quickly warmed up when the sun came out. An absolutely perfect day!

Daniel's pumpkin patch!

We love all the fun pumpkin patches we have in this area. Each year we try to go to as many as we can but its been getting difficult as the kids get into school and trying to plan them all out since I protest them on weekends and refuse to fight the crowds. So today was a perfect weather day to take advantage of one. Andrew usually goes to preschool all day on Fridays but we made an except today and took him out for a couple of hours and today was also the beginning of fall break for Adriana. It was perfect today. There was hardly anyone there and the kids had almost the whole place to themselves. They never had to wait to do any of the things they wanted to do. We stayed for almost three hours and I finally had to make the kids leave to get Andrew to school in time for his second half. So here are a few pics of all the fun things we did.....
First we started off inside and of course had to go see all the animals. Adriana immediately had to run to pet one of the many horses.

The kids looking at all the other animals.

Hey guys there is more fun this way! Thanks Joey!

Next we went into one of the other inside rooms where they have lots of toy tractors to ride on and bins of corn to play in.






After spending about 45 minutes inside, we finally made it outside. The kids were so amazed at this corn thingy and I know had to play there for a good thirty minutes!



Next were the swings. I'm so glad my kids love each other so much and have no problem staying in each area until everyone is ready to move on. I've been so lucky with the three of them and I know they will grow up to have such a loving sibling bond with each other through their adult years!








Come on, lets find more fun things to do!

The boys then spotted all the tractors they could climb on and were in Heaven! The had to climb on every tractor and see what they could do on it.





Time for a little costume fun! Let's pretend we are one of these monsters!

AAAhhhhhh!


Whose tongue sticks out further?!?

Andrew, good job! That is the correct way to go down the slide!

Ummmm, no Joey! That is not how we go down the slide!

Ummm, Adriana that is definitely not how we go down the slide!

Before we left we headed back inside to pick out some pumpkins. I told each of them they had to carry what they picked in hopes that they wouldn't one some giant one. Joey picked out a little bitty one and I forgot to get a picture of him with his.
Adriana picked out a medium size one.

Then Andrew had to come along with this giant pumpkin. Yes, I did make the poor boy carry it but only to the counter. I was afraid he would hurt himself so I was a sucker and carried it to the car.

Yes, I know I can get pumpkins a lot cheaper at other places than what we paid for but I always think its part of the experience of going to the pumpkin patch. Thats what my parents did for us every year so I guess I'm continuing on with it for my kiddos!
We had such and amazing time and the kids had so much fun they spent most of the day just giggling away! So many memories the kids will gain with the pumpkin patches every year and I'm so glad I can be there to enjoy it all with each of them!