caught up with summer

i've spent most of the day catching up on all my posts that i promised from the summer. i did this mainly for our own family record, so feel free to skip all that reading if you prefer. i do highly recommend reading the st. louis post though.

#7 st. louis

our big stop on the way home from utah was to visit the city museum in st. louis, missouri. i have wanted to visit ever since i saw my friend's (jolynne) pictures from her visit (i think jennifer gardner recommended it to her). this place was insanely fun. they give you no map when you go in and tell you to just go around and explore. it has three stories with cages and slides that go back and forth from story to story. (one slide will take you down three slides.) we had a blast despite the fact we were all sweating like pigs from the mugginess and heat of the day.



here are two pics from the outside of building and you can see where you can climb through things. you can climb up to that fuselage and they were working on a cage/steps that would take you to a school bus hanging off the roof.

my girls loved climbing over this "pond" of water.

close-ups of the cages both inside and out of the museum that will take you to floor from floor.

this slide that had a practically 90 degree slant to it was the biggest hit for my girls. lily especially loved it and needed a lot clearance at the end to slow down.

optional way up the slide.

love this pic with grace at the top and lily flying down at the bottom.

there was another room filled with skateboard-like ramps that you could slide down. who knew that concrete could be so slippery and smooth? you can see me helping push fritz up one of the steep ramps; he insisted on going up the hard way. in the blurry pic, you can see me pushing jake up and down a ramp. he enjoyed this greatly (although it was a little taxing on me and i think i got him stuck on a set of steep hill-like ramps).

another section of the museum was a carnival theme with old pinball machines and arcades. here we are cooling off with a soda by the world's largest pair of underwear.

here are the kids asleep all together in the same bed at the hotel. it was the night before we went to the museum. it took two trips to the pool that night to tire them out after spending two days in the car. the museum also helped expand energy and we ended up driving through the night and being home by the next afternoon.

day with the dinosaurs

the day before we left, we went to the dinosaur museum at thanksgiving point with my nephew, colin, and my mother-in-law. it was a great hands-on museum and the kids had a great time.

irrigation and yard

the garden got irrigated twice while we were in utah. the kids and cousins had lots of fun playing in the ditches.

they also had lots of fun playing in nana's and aunt nancy's (who lives next door) yards.

#5 the school bus

one reason we drove out to utah was to buy a lift van! the van has been a wonderful blessing. it has good pick-up speed, gets better gas mileage than our mini-van did, amazing head clearance and even seat warmers (which i did appreciate this past week when the weather was really cold) in addition to that absolutely wonderful, amazing, save my aching back lift. when we were in utah, one of my nephews kept referring to our van as the school bus. we took a drive through the canyons with the youngest hinckley grandchildren (minus mallory and baby jane). i just love this pic (courtesy of ann) of everyone ready for the drive. when we got back home to connecticut, the back seat came out and we put in straps to secure the wheelchair.

#4 baby ian and baby jane

we had a new nephew (my side) and a new niece (pat's side) to meet when we went to utah. we were so glad to be able to meet them when they were still so precious and are humbled to realize how big they will be the next time we see them (in december - yeah!).

the girls with baby ian.

can't say the best pic of me but i just adore when i can hold a baby this way. newborns are just so kissable.

the happy family: tim, ashley and ian.



here's gracie with baby jane. grace loved holding jane and would spend hours (if she could) bouncing jane on the therapy ball (something jane loved) while watching disney channel (which according to my brother-in-law is basically watching all the plots from "saved by the bell" in a slightly different format. i never had the pleasure with "saved by the bell" -yes, i'm that old - but glad i wasn't the one downstairs while grace did this. thanks, ann & brian for letting her get her disney channel fix.)

#6 nana's (and brian's) garden

my mother-in-law has an amazing garden/yard. i think she grows almost all her vegetables from seed. this year, my brother-in-law helped/took over/ became obssesed with the garden too and the results were quite impressive.


i loved how the onions grew partially above the ground.

digging up the potatoes. it was the first time i had seen it done as despite the fact that my grandparents and great-grandparents lived on a farm, their jobs were in the city. they employed a man to run the farm (that really was more for show and eggs - which i hated egging the chickens by the way).

here's my niece, anna, tasting the flower from the onion plant (yes, it tasted like onion). anna was gracious enough to pose for me when i asked her.


bonus pic of gracie's nature people that she created.